


Receipt in the Bag

by Misaya



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Grocery Store, Baby Rey, Blow Jobs, Bottom Armitage Hux, Eventual Relationships, Eventual Romance, Eventual Sex, Fluff, Hand Jobs, Implied Poe Dameron/Finn, Kylo Ren Being a Little Shit, Kylo Ren and Rey Are Related, M/M, POV Multiple, POV Poe Dameron, Romantic Comedy, Sexual Content, Slow Build, Top Kylo Ren
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-05-28 17:13:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 24
Words: 63,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6337918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Misaya/pseuds/Misaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You can tell a lot about a person by examining the contents of their grocery bags. When they're sad, when they're treating themselves, when they fall in love. </p><p>-----</p><p>Supermarket! AU, slow build Kylux, ft. cashier!Poe, BagBoy8, and tiny!Rey; tags/rating updated with progress</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pizza

Kylo Ren, if his credit card was to be believed, had been coming to Maz's for as long as Poe Dameron had been working there, and Poe was all too acquainted with the young man's shopping habits. He couldn't help but stifle a smile as Kylo maneuvered his cart into the aisle of the register he was currently manning; it was the one with the wonky wheel, and Poe had been able to hear it, along with Kylo's stifled curses, from four aisles over. Calm elevator music played overhead as he observed Kylo throwing his groceries haphazardly onto the conveyor belt, and by his side, the bagging droid BB8, beeped in mild distress. Poe was quite sure that BB8, short for BagBoy 8, was keen on the espresso machine in the store's little in-house cafe, but perhaps BB8 had a small romance on the cash register as well. Poe had had his fair share of in-store dalliances, himself; his latest infatuation was a newly hired man named Finn, who Maz had put on dairy duty, or something of the sort. 

Poe whistled cheerily to himself as he slid Kylo's items through the scanner, which made a polite little beep after each one. Ah, yes. Kylo's usual fare. Bulk packs of frozen foods, frighteningly large jars of protein powder, and the odds and ends that constituted the average bachelor life. Poe could sympathize, and was about to open his mouth and tell Kylo so, when a certain item caught his eye. 

A single pizza Lunchable tray slid innocuously down the conveyor belt, and Poe quirked an eyebrow at Kylo. 

"It's for my cousin," Kylo spat at him, frowning and folding his arms over his chest. Poe noted that his arms were quite well toned; he probably didn't need the protein powder or anything of the sort, but far be it from Poe to stop him. "My little cousin." He emphasized the word little, as though there was any lingering doubt in Poe's mind. 

"Right, I'm sure it is," Poe shot back, grinning as he slid the item over to BB8, who slipped it into a paper bag and beeped cheerfully. "How old's your cousin, then?" 

He had expected Kylo to fumble with his words, to grope around for an answer; Poe had learned early on that Kylo was a horrendous liar, ever since that particular incident early on in his career when he'd caught Kylo buying doughnuts, doughnut holes, and a large roll of adhesive tape. "She's five," Kylo announced quickly, not lying this time, a faint smile appearing on his face before his trademark scowl took over again. 

"Oh, that's a cute age," Poe agreed, tapping keys at the register to end the transaction. Kylo handed over his card, watching beadily as Poe swiped it through the machine and returned it to him, as though perhaps watching if Poe was feeling inspired to tamper with the magnetic strip and siphon money away from his bank account. It was just the sort of thing Kylo probably would have believed, Poe thought to himself as he let the long receipt feed through his fingers before ripping it off with an expert tear and asking Kylo if he wanted the receipt in the bag or with him. 

"With me," Kylo insisted, and Poe watched as he struggled to maneuver the cart over to the automatic doors on the far end of the store, trying to keep himself from laughing as the long scarf of receipt fluttered in Kylo's wake. 

"See you next week!" he called to Kylo's back, but Kylo was far too busy examining the discounts and how much his Frequent Shopper card had saved him to turn back and reply. 

"Man, he's a piece of work, don't you think?" Poe asked BB8, sighing and stretching to work out the kink in his back. Kylo had clearly entered the parking lot; car alarms were beeping off frantically in varying keys of klaxon, and Poe could only hope that the wonky cart wouldn't end up rammed into a wall or something of the sort. He was quite fond of it, had taken a shine to it over the past few months that he'd worked at Maz's. 

BB8 beeped up at him as if in agreement, and Poe patted the bagging droid fondly on the head as he turned to greet the next customer.

* * *

 

Brendol Hux II had also been coming to Maz's for as long as Poe could remember, and unlike Kylo, Hux greeted Poe civilly with what might even have been constituted as a smile. Cat food, chicken breasts, bags of organically grown spinach, neatly bagged potatoes. A box of shredded wheat, flour, sugar. Bananas. Mint toothpaste with extra strong whitening power. Hux was clearly a no-nonsense type of guy, and Poe could appreciate that. 

By the time he had finished scanning the last of Hux's items - "Treating yourself, then?" in response to a pint of black raspberry ice cream; Hux had nodded and offered no comment - Hux already had the exact change needed for his groceries, and Poe dropped the shiny coins and crisply folded bills into his till while the short receipt printed out next to him. 

"This isn't mine." 

Poe looked up from his battle with the till; the door tended to jam, and it refused to close. "I beg your pardon?" he asked. His eyes went to the paper bag Hux was holding, looking into its contents. The bright yellow branding of a single pizza Lunchable peeked up at him from the mouth of the bag, and he tutted. "Oh, that was the guy before you." He listened closely; car alarms were still going off, resonating in the parking lot. "He's probably still here, I can quickly go out and run it to him." 

"No need," Hux responded, eyeing the bag as though it had offended his delicate sensibilities with its preservatives, probably enough to fell a bull elephant in the prime of its youth. "I got a good look at the fellow. Tall, dark. Shopping cart with a squeaky wheel." 

"That's exactly right," Poe agreed, folding the receipt neatly into one of Hux's reusable bags before pushing it across the counter into his arms. "Responds to the name of Kylo Ren. Will probably bite if you say that the Lunchable is for anyone other than his little cousin."

"I see." Hux picked up the paper bag, frowning as though perhaps the nitrates and sulfates in the processed dough and pepperonis were contagious. "I shall do my best to return it to him. Please see to your other customers."

"Will do, sir," Poe replied, grinning and bidding Hux a good night before turning to the next customer. This one didn't have any reusable bags, and all but threw a tantrum when Poe informed him that it would be an additional ten cent charge to purchase a bag, and BB8 quickly rolled off when it became apparent that the customer was leveling to throw a tomato at him, seeking shelter next to the espresso machine, who cooed lightly at him and released a small burst of steam.

* * *

 

"Hey, you!" 

Kylo turned around quickly, straightening abruptly and nearly banging his head on the top of his Toyota's trunk. He had almost finished loading the groceries into the back - the bottom of one paper bag had split, and he'd spent a good few minutes running around the parking lot trying to collect the runaway oranges. 

"What is it?" he asked, frowning at the man who was approaching him, a paper bag held out between the tips of his fingers as though it contained a large, frothing, probably rabid animal. "If you're selling something, I'm not interested."

"I believe this is yours," the man replied, frowning back in equal measure. The orange glow of the streetlights caught in his burnished copper hair and made the zippers of his eco-friendly reusable shopping bags gleam. Kylo hated him on principle, but he looked into the paper bag anyway. Inside sat his - no, Rey's - Lunchable, and he had to fight against the urge to snatch it away from the man. 

"Right," he gritted out, accepting it and putting the paper sack into the trunk with the others. "It's for my little cousin."

The man gave him a slow, long look, from head to toe, and Kylo had been bulking for the better part of the last two months, but something about this man had him feeling small and vulnerable again. He didn't particularly like it one bit, and he was about to tell the man where he could shove his soy milk and organic tofu sausages when the man gave him a terse nod and unlocked the car of the shiny silver sedan next to Kylo's beat up SUV that had certainly seen better days. Looking back and forth from his SUV to the man's sedan, Kylo couldn't help but notice that the man's car had no dents, no paint chips, not even a smattering of water stains on the windshield. The trunk opened smoothly and stayed open; Kylo's had to be manually held up, and though it had done wonders for his triceps, it was an utter pain in the ass. He watched the man loading his reusable bags into his trunk, before neatly closing it with a soft click and wheeling the cart - with all wheels functioning - away properly to a cart return. Kylo admittedly had been tempted to leave the cart propped up against the little island of curb in the middle of the parking lot - the wheel had been more than temperamental once they'd gotten outside, as if the bumpy asphalt of the lot had had it on its last straws, but seeing the man being a good citizen inspired Kylo to perhaps not be such of a bad one. 

By the time he'd gotten the cart into the approved cart return location, with several curses and one stubbed toe to show for it, the man had already driven away without even giving Kylo the opportunity to thank him. Ah, well, Kylo thought to himself as he hauled himself into the driver's seat and pushed aside a veritable flood of fast food wrappers that threatened to drown him the instant he got into the car. He was probably a pretentious douche, with a name like Phillip Algernon the Third or something like that. He clicked on the headlights and looked in the rearview mirror to make sure that there was no one behind him before haphazardly reversing out of his slot and squealing out of the parking lot.

* * *

 

Rey eyed him suspiciously when he entered their little apartment. "Benny!" she roared up at him, in a loud, shrill voice that had Kylo closing the door quickly behind him; he didn't want to be written up for yet another noise complaint. The landlord was already threatening to evict the both of them, and as of yet, no one would believe that the source of the noise was actually Kylo's tiny, three foot five, five-year-old cousin. 

"Yes, yes, what is it?" Kylo asked, exasperated. The incessant sound of cartoons was playing from the tiny living room, even though he was quite sure he had extracted a promise from Rey to give herself a bath before he got back from the supermarket. "Did you take a bath?"

Rey deflected the question with an expertise that Kylo secretly admired. "I hungry!" she shouted up at him, patting her stomach for emphasis. Kylo frowned at her, reaching into one of the paper bags and pulling out the pizza meal, which she grabbed from him eagerly, ripping open the wrapper with relish. 

"We use our inside voice, remember, Rey?" he asked, but it was an exercise in futility. It seemed half the kitchen table was already covered with tomato sauce, and the sound of Rey's frantic chewing was driving Kylo half up the wall. He busied himself with unloading the rest of the groceries into the fridge, wondering what he would make himself for dinner. An omelette, perhaps. But that cheese didn't look quite right; it wasn't supposed to be green, was it? 

Rey distracted him from his thoughts yet again, announcing that she was finished, and Kylo took a deep breath, steeling himself for the carnage that surely awaited him. 

She looked as though she had slaughtered someone happily in cold blood. It was, admittedly, one of her better nights, though Kylo did not particularly want to question how she had managed the feat of getting tomato sauce on the ceiling. 

"You've only eaten half!" he protested, looking at the plastic tray. A pasty dough circle still remained, along with a mild sprinkling of shredded cheese and two little pepperonis. The packet of sauce had all but been obliterated. 

"I full," Rey announced, proudly. "I wanna bath." 

"Good, you should do that," Kylo agreed. God, there was even tomato sauce in her hair. "Do you know how to run it?" 

"I do, Benny. I am five years old," Rey informed him, as though he wasn't aware of the fact. 

"Right, of course you are," Kylo replied, watching as she ran off to the bathroom. A moment later, the sound of water gurgling through the pipes reached his ears. "Don't put in too much bubble bath!" he called, as an afterthought, and thought that perhaps Rey had acknowledged him with a shout back of her own. 

He sat down to the last remaining pizza Lunchable, squeezing out what little sauce he could onto the dough circle and allocating the toppings evenly across its surface. He took a bite. Another. It wasn't half bad, he supposed, but there were definitely better pizzas in the frozen sections at Maz's.

The thought of Maz's had his mind spiraling back to thoughts of the man that had returned his Lunchable, and Kylo frowned as he took another savage bite, popping the rest of the little pizza into his mouth and chewing vigorously. That fucker probably made artisanal pizza in his stone oven at home, Kylo thought angrily. Flatbreads with pesto and goat cheese and organic cured meats. He'd probably never even heard of a preservative or artificial food coloring. 

"Benny!" Rey screeched from the bathroom, and Kylo leaped out of his seat, swallowing the rest of the pizza roughly as he sprinted to the bathroom. A thick layer of bubbles coated the tile, and Kylo groaned as Rey looked beseechingly up at him, adorned with a fluffy white beard and a makeshift soapy tiara. 

"I thought I told you not to add too much bubble bath," Kylo groaned in despair as he reached for the mop and bucket that stood ready in the corner for just such eventualities. "You added the rest of it, didn't you?" Rey shook her head vigorously, her wet hair splashing soapy water onto the walls, but the evidence was in the empty pink plastic bottle lying on the tile floor. 

"You need to stop doing this," Kylo informed her, but Rey had already taken up position behind a barricade of bubbles and was spraying him with warm water with a toy pistol, blissfully unaware to his distress. 


	2. Cookies

"You - I mean, your little cousin - got her Lunchable, then, did she?" Poe asked the next week when Kylo came skidding into his register only three or so minutes before closing time. Normally, Poe would have closed up his register long ago, reached up to flick off the little light and sent BB8 on his happy way to canoodle with the espresso machine, but he was strategically waiting for the new employee in dairy to come out so he could make an excuse of walking him to his car or something. The man, Finn, if the employee records Poe had filched from Maz's crammed tiny back office were correct, had yet to leave, and Poe had been wondering whether or not he was particularly connected to dairy products. Maybe he was from some far off place with frigid temperatures, and the freezer reminded him of home. Maybe he took particular comfort in looking at the waxy cubes of butter and the silvery tubs of cream cheese. 

He had been in the middle of a daydream involving him and Finn and perhaps cherry Popsicles when Kylo had come barging his way into the middle of the fantasy. 

He had his little cousin with him this time, stuffed almost haphazardly into the little seat of the shopping cart, her chubby legs flailing as though to prove to Poe that she was indeed real and not just a figment of Kylo's certainly overactive imagination. She looked up at him, smiling with undisguised glee, and Poe couldn't help but grin back. He reached over the counter to pinch at her cheek, cooing about how cute she was, and she giggled at him, squealing with delight as he handed over an orange lollipop from the glass jar next to the till.

Kylo sighed with undisguised disgust. "Don't encourage her," he muttered, but the girl was already ripping open the thin plastic wrapper with her teeth, blowing it out to crinkle all over the floor. "Great. Now she'll be hyper until midnight." 

"Wha's tha?" she screeched up at him, spitting little flecks of orange all over Kylo's white tank top, advertising some obscure band that Poe had certainly never heard of before in his life. 

Kylo frowned down at her as he fumbled in the pocket of his jeans for his wallet. BB8 was making the most of Kylo's distraction to pack the bags full to bursting. He was well aware that many customers, Kylo included, did not like it, but the bagging droid simply could not understand why one would choose to pay the extra surcharge for additional bags when they were not required. That, and he was trying to clean up his act for the glossy Vesuvius Dual Boiler in the little cafe, who never failed to remind him that she was an eco-friendly machine at every turn. 

"It means you'll be wide awake until midnight," Kylo informed her, wresting his beat-up leather wallet from the confines of his back pocket and rifling through its worn pockets for his credit card, spilling out old receipts and half-filled punch cards to different food places in town all over the countertop. Poe waited patiently. 

"What's your name, cutie pie?" he asked, smiling benevolently at the little girl, who was no doubt leaving sticky fingerprints all over the donations box to the local Cub Scouts troop she had swiped from the counter, shaking it to hear the shiny coins inside jingle. "Yeah, that makes a nice noise, doesn't it?"

"I'm Rey!" she shouted up at him; Poe was truly impressed by the sheer volume she produced. Perhaps he would have to ask Kylo if they could make use of Rey's services to replace the staticky overhead intercom that had a penchant for cutting out right as Poe was about to announce the sale price of green beans ($0.42 a pound!) or how many packets of salt and vinegar crisps you needed to buy to be entered in the grand raffle (23, no more and no less). Who would buy 23 packets of salt and vinegar crisps, exactly? Poe lamented to Maz, but the storeowner was firm in her decisions and could not be coerced otherwise. As it turned out, the only person who purchased the required amount had done so right before departing on a long cruise around the West Indies, and despite Poe's weekly emails to the address they had filled out on a little placard that came with purchase of the snacks, there had been no response. The prize of the grand raffle, a $10 in-store gift card, languished in the back shelves of the stock room. 

"Well, how about that, then," Poe said, grinning at the little girl, who shook his proffered hand with vigor. She left sticky orange flavoring all along his thumb. "My name is Poe."

"Poe!" she shrieked up at him, beaming sweetly. "A Tubby!"

"A what now?" Poe asked. Sure, he knew he didn't work out nearly as much as Kylo apparently did, but he was quite certain he did not have excess pooch in his poochy parts like some other twenty-four-year-olds might have. 

Kylo snorted, barely stifling a laugh as he hastened to explain. "A Teletubby," he announced, placing emphasis on the first two syllables that Rey had neglected to add. "It's one of her favorite TV characters. Some creepy looking puppets with TV screens in their stomachs. I think Poe is the red one." 

"Oh." Poe frowned. Creepy looking puppet, indeed. He would have to send a strongly worded email to the show's producer. He was quite good at that, and spent a fair bit of his free hours sending out electronic missives to large-brand corporations. His emails always returned with some automatically generated reply from a template or from a particularly depressed intern, but this did not deter Poe in the slightest. He was convinced that perseverance was a standard hallmark of any good citizen, so, really, he was just doing his part. "Well, at least I'm your favorite, huh, kiddo?"

Rey giggled as BB8 beeped admonishingly at her as he levered the stuffed bags into the back of the cart. Her sticky hands left little fingerprints on his glossy display, and he refused to continue loading them until he extracted a promise from Poe to polish him with wet wipes until he went to see Miss Vesuvius. 

Poe was so preoccupied with the multiple coupons Kylo had excavated from the recesses of his wallet to realize that the man had asked him a question. The coupons were crinkling at the edges, this one had expired in 2002, and -

"Excuse me!" Kylo all but shouted at him, and Poe jumped, scattering the coupons across the floor. Rey laughed up at him. "I've been trying to ask you something for the past five minutes!"

"Sorry, what was that?" he asked, pasting a pleasant smile on his face. A door creaked somewhere to the right of them, Finn appearing from the stacks, shivering and rubbing frantically at his arms to ward off the lingering chill, and it was all Poe could do not to vault over the counter, push Kylo aside, and run to wrap the other man in an employee-handbook-approved, completely platonic hug. 

"I said," Kylo snapped, completely oblivious to the way Poe was standing on tiptoes, craning his head around Kylo's shoulder to try and see Finn walking past the cash registers. Finn caught his eye, smiled shyly. Waved. Poe nearly took his arm off trying to wave back, and by the time Kylo turned around to see who exactly Poe was signaling to ("What the fuck are you looking at?!", with a gasp from Rey that Benny had said a very very very BAD WORD), Finn had already walked out the automatic doors and Poe's chances were dashed for another night. He sagged with disappointment, and reached up to click off the register's light, ignoring the grumbles of consternation of the two other that had lined up behind Kylo.

"Ahem, as I was saying," Kylo continued, frowning at Poe, "who was that man the other night?"

"What?" Poe asked, dumbfounded. What man? 

"You know. Short, redhead, reusable bags." Kylo delivered the adjectives like a jury foreman announcing that they had found the defendant guilty on all counts, and particularly contemptible to boot. "He gave me back the Lunchable in the parking lot."

"Oh!" Realization dawned over Poe's face. "You must mean Hux. I mean, his name is Brendol, but we're not exactly on a first-name basis." An idea sprouted in his mind, and he leaned over the counter, smiling slyly. "Why, who wants to know?"

Kylo glared at him, and the force of his stare would have sent a lesser being reeling to the back of the store. However, Poe had built up a tolerance to it after being subjected to just such a look many times over the years, and he brushed it off easily. "Taking an interest in him, are you?" he quipped, tearing off Kylo's receipt and drawing a big smiley face on the back in fluorescent pink highlighter before giving it to Rey to play with. She draped it around herself immediately, like the flimsy starts of a very cheap, very sloppy Halloween mummy costume. 

"Not at all," Kylo fired back. "I just wanted to thank him. It made Rey very happy."

"Right, of course," Poe agreed, easing off. Rey was gesturing to him, holding out her tiny, clutched fist, and Poe held out his hand obediently. She dropped the half-eaten orange lollipop into it, and before he could even blink in protest, Kylo was wheeling her out of the store. She laughed and waved at him from beneath Kylo's arm.

* * *

 

Kylo prided himself on being something of an expert when it came to tracking people down. Armed with nothing but the knowledge of Brendol Hux's name and his usage of reusable bags, he set himself to work that night in front of his laptop to Google the man. Rey was sleeping vigorously on the couch, having crashed from her mild sugar high before Kylo could get near her little fangs with anything even remotely resembling a toothbrush, and the only sound other than the chainsaw of her snores were the light taps of Kylo's keyboard. 

Yes, he could easily have let the incident go, it was, after all, just a single pizza Lunchable that had caused Kylo more pain and grief in the end than $3.99 plus tax should have demanded, but he hadn't thanked the man, and the lessons his mother had engrained in him from an early age were not to be forgotten so easily. 

Ah. Here was a news article, some community spotlight. Kylo crinkled an empty plastic bottle of water next to him, tossing it in the general direction of the kitchen trash can with a clatter that failed to wake Rey, and settled in to read.

* * *

 

Hux detested the article Kylo was reading right now in his little cracker box apartment only a few miles away from Hux's minimalist flat in the West end. Yes, he had rescued that cat from a burning building. Yes, he donated a good amount to animal shelters throughout the city at every tax period. Yes, he probably picked up more than his fair share of litter and deposited it in the appropriate city-provided metal trash cans along his daily walk to work. But surely all of that didn't warrant that community spotlight, featuring him as a Model Citizen.

Capitalized. He even had the gold medal stashed away in some closet drawer somewhere to prove it. 

Millicent, said cat from said building, meowed and rubbed herself against his legs now, and he patted at his lap absentmindedly, letting her jump up to seat herself in a neat little purring curl. He was reading a book - Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy by John le Carre - and sipping from a glass of 1989 Pinot Noir breathing on the glass table beside his elbow. 

It was ten-thirty. Hux was not expecting any visitors, not now and not ever. It was a Friday evening, and all the other young, rich, bohemians slash delinquents in his apartment complex had fled to the downtown area for some semblance of night life. 

No self-respecting people with any sense of civility would be ringing his doorbell and then bashing on the door with a heavy hand, and Hux's heart leapt into his throat. Millicent hissed at the door, jumping and knocking over the glass of wine to puddle red on the table, and Hux just added this onto another list of grievances which the unknown caller had caused by their very presence. It certainly wasn't Millicent's fault. 

He marched angrily to the door, unlocking it and pulling it open just enough that the tightly linked gold chain pulled taut. "Whatever you're selling, I don't want it," he snapped through the crack before looking to see who it was. "This is a private residential area, and I have no -"

"Here." A little blue bag was thrust into his direct line of vision, frothing over the top with badly crinkled green tissue paper that looked as though it had been used and reused for just such similar little blue bags for Christmas and birthdays and other sorts of holidays. His eyes traced the twine handle up to the hand holding it, the hand up the arm, the shoulder to the chin. 

He frowned. The man's face sparked a hint of recognition. 

Scanning him and seeing that he did not appear to be relatively dangerous, Hux stepped back to unhook the chain and open the door a hair more. 

"I'm Kylo," Kylo stammered, looking irritated and flustered as he thrust the bag out towards Hux again. Hux looked at it. Millicent hissed up at Kylo. "You gave me back my grocery bag a week or so ago at the parking lot in Maz's, and I wanted to say thank you."

"Ah." That was all Hux had to say on the matter, and Kylo all but forced the bag into his hand. "And what's this?"

"Cookies," Kylo clarified, frowning as he withdrew his hand. There was a burn along the back of it that looked quite bad, the skin a bright red. "It was the least I could do."

"Hmm." Hux looked at the bag in his hand. It did not look to be in danger of exploding any time soon. "Well, this is an unexpected surprise." 

He stared at Kylo. Kylo stared at him. Millicent had walked over, started to knead at the toe of Kylo's red Converse with one paw. 

"Well, if that's it, then," Kylo stammered, uncertain, "I'll be on my way." 

There was something suspicious about this whole encounter that had Hux on edge, and he vowed to himself that he would not take even a single bite of the cookies Kylo had so painstakingly prepared for him. But it was late, his mind was preoccupied with the novel and slightly fuzzy with the wine, and he did not realize what the issue was until he had safely glared Kylo back into the elevator and had padded down the carpeted hallway to surreptitiously peer out of a chink in the Venetian blinds to watch Kylo's old Toyota careening out of the parking lot, nearly taking out a mailbox on the way. 

Then it dawned on him. 

Kylo didn't live in this complex, had never seen him before that fateful encounter in Maz's parking lot, yet somehow here he was, showing up on Friday nights at utterly disrespectful hours to shove poison pastries in his hands, seemingly knowing exactly where Hux lived. 

It was uncanny. Perhaps he was a spy, a stalker, or, worse, a particularly enthusiastic telemarketer.

Hux's nerves were on edge as he retreated back into his flat, double and triple checking the lock and chain. Millicent purred curiously up at him as he deposited the bag on the table carefully, picking apart the tissue paper and peeling it away carefully to look at the clumsily Saran-wrapped package of what did in fact appear to be cookies. 

A little handwritten note in barely legible chicken scratch informed him that these cookies were carob chip, low-calorie, naturally sweetened, gluten- and nut-free cookies. Hux wondered why there were all these stipulations. 

He offered a crumb to the beta fish in a bowl on the coffee table, more for show and Millicent's entertainment than any particular desire Hux had to own a fish, and when the poor creature nibbled it and did not instantly float to the surface, Hux deemed it safe to try. 

All things considering, it wasn't bad, had Hux been allergic to gluten, nuts, or even genuine chocolate. 

As Brendol Hux II had no allergies, save for a severe intolerance to inane questions, the cookies were 'ICKY,' as a childish hand had printed on the back of the little note. Perhaps he would give it to the new couple that had just moved in across the hall in 114B. They looked to be the type that might appreciate such a gesture, and Hux was nothing if not a good neighbor. 


	3. Bug Spray

Kylo woke up to the sound of high-pitched shrieking, and thought for a brief moment that he had truly descended to the deepest depths of hell. The noise pierced right through whatever pleasant dreams he might have been having, one of which placed him as the dashing knight in shining armor rescuing a damsel in distress from her tower. That would have all been well and good, had said damsel in distress not looked disconcertingly like Hux with long burnished tresses. 

"Benny!" Rey screamed from the general vicinity of the kitchen, and Kylo's heart clutched in his chest. Yes, it was one thing to go griping to one's friends on social media and the cashier at the grocery store about how irritating his baby cousin was, but Kylo couldn't bear the sound of her in distress. And, from the sound of it, she was very distressed indeed. 

He skidded into the kitchen mere moments later, his hair askew, his knee smarting from where he'd banged it against the doorjamb in his hurry to get to Rey, his eyes darting around the tiny room for the intruder or any blood smatters that might have occurred. 

She was, inexplicably, fine. Screaming at nothing, and Kylo's heart rate started to slow, irritation setting in. A glance at the clock over the sink informed him that it was only 7:32 AM. Disgustingly early, and if Kylo had had his way, he wouldn't have risen until the sun had already hiked far up into the sky. 

"Jesus Christ, Rey," he couldn't help but snap. She was staring intensely at a corner of the kitchen, and for a brief moment, Kylo entertained the thought that perhaps Rey was channeling some sort of Sixth Sense bullshit. Maybe she'd gotten the idea from the late late show, when she was definitely not supposed to be awake, and had thought it would be hilarious. A real riot. "What's the problem?"

"Benny," she wept, disconsolate, dancing on her tiptoes and pointing to the corner of the room with tears in her eyes. "Look, look!" 

Kylo looked. Very hard. Squinted; he didn't have his glasses on or his contacts in, having neglected to correct his vision before sprinting to the kitchen, assuming that the threat would be quite visible and easy to demolish. He neared the corner, frowning in the direction of Rey's tiny index finger. 

Ah. Here was the culprit. A single cockroach. Admittedly, it was a big cockroach if Kylo had ever seen one, but it was certainly no cause for all these histrionics. He ordered Rey to fetch him a square of paper towel - she came back with three - and squashed it with very little drama or fanfare. 

"Are you quite done, then?" he asked her, sighing as he deposited the wadded paper towel into the trash can and patting her head with his other hand as she dried her tears against his sweatpants. "See? It's gone. Nothing to cry about." 

"Benny is so brave," she sobbed, her little body shaking. 

"It's okay," he soothed her, his tone switching to consoling. He already knew he wasn't going to be getting back to sleep, though by the fuss Rey had worked herself into, he wouldn't have been surprised if she dropped off sometime around mid-morning. That would be fine; it would give him more time to work on what felt like the fifth revision of the beginning of the Great American Novel he had been trying to write for the better half of six months. "The big bad cockroach won't hurt you, okay? You're much bigger than it is, so it's probably a lot more scared of you than you are of it." 

She looked tearfully up at him, her chubby cheeks flushed, and Kylo sighed. 

"Would you like to go have pancakes?" he inquired, knowing all too well what the answer would be. 

She cheered up right away, and ran off to her room to get dressed into going-out clothes. Kylo eyed his damp sweatpants with disgust, and tossed them in the general direction of the laundry hamper as he rifled through his dresser drawers for a clean pair of jeans.

* * *

 

Kylo watched with undisguised admiration as Rey plowed her way through a tall stack of crispy waffles liberally doused with maple syrup and whipped cream. After quietly explaining the situation to a sympathetic waitress who had called Rey the most adorable little cherub on the planet, Kylo had also managed to convince the short-order cook in the back to decorate her waffles with a smiley face made out of chocolate chips. She had plucked them off delicately, one by one, and devoured them by the fistful. Kylo sipped at his black coffee and was in the process of prodding at his decidedly overdone hash browns when he happened to look up from his plate (Rey had tried to draw a smiley face on the plastic with ketchup, and it had come out in three massive red blobs) and saw Hux pushing through the door of the small cafe. He had a small ginger cat in his arms, and the cat was, inexplicably, dressed in a little striped sweater and mittens as though the cat needed particular protection from the inclement weather (see: a light drizzle) outside. 

Hux set the cat down as he stood at the counter, rifling through a plasticky laminated menu and perusing the options. He had his infuriating recyclable grocery bag looped over his shoulder, but despite this, Kylo couldn't help but notice how the milky morning light caught his profile, threading soft fingers through his copper hair. The sleeves of his red and white checked flannel shirt was rolled up to the elbows, and his dark-wash jeans were in an artful state of crumpling. 

In short, he looked like an asshole, albeit quite an attractive one, and Kylo slouched grumpily in the plastic seats of the booth, which groaned under the rough treatment. 

The cat picked its way over to them, mincing its way delicately over the floor tiles. 

"Kitty!" Rey screamed, all but throwing herself out of the seat to kneel on the undoubtedly grime-riddled tile floor to wrap her arms around the cat's neck. The cat seemed to have no particular qualms about being handled in such a manner, and Kylo looked over to see Hux walking towards them. 

"Fuck," he hissed under his breath. He had been hoping against hope Hux wouldn't notice, but Rey's voice could fell bull elephants at a distance of approximately a mile, and unfortunately Hux was more observant than your average boulder. He tried to paste a quick smile on his face as Hux approached, but it came out looking more like a grimace. "Fancy running into you here," he said, weakly.

* * *

 

"Yes, fancy that," Hux agreed, taking a quick glance over the little girl and Millicent, who was licking stray flecks of whipped cream from the girl's cheek. Satisfied that Millicent was not in any imminent danger of having her whiskers or tail yanked, he turned his attention back to Kylo. "It would almost be as though we lived in the same municipality. Speaking of that, I have a few things to ask you."

He waited patiently for Kylo to begrudgingly offer him a seat at the booth before slipping into the slippery seats and placing his grocery bag on the seat next to him. 

"What did you want to ask?" Kylo asked, arching a pierced eyebrow at him. Hux thought he looked rather messy; his long hair was still slightly wet, curling around his ears as though he'd just stepped out of the shower and run a messy towel and comb through his hair. His glasses were crooked on the bridge of his nose, and Hux wondered why the man had taken pains to add the various metal appliqués to his face (4 piercings, and that was just the ones that had caught Hux's immediate attention) when that attention could have been much better spent making himself look more presentable for the viewing pleasure of general society. Granted, the Waffle Cafe was not exactly the height of class, but Hux would have been personally embarrassed if he'd entered the establishment looking, well, messy. 

"I wanted to ask you how exactly you got my address," Hux said, cutting right to the point. 

Kylo opened his mouth to answer, but at that instant, the little girl that had accompanied him jumped up into the seat next to Hux, patting the plastic seat next to her. Much to Hux's surprise, Millicent hopped up obligingly, purring lightly as the girl petted her. "And you are?" he asked, arching a brow down at the little girl. 

"I'm Rey!" she yelled up at him. Hux could feel the onset of tinnitus. "You are Kitty's owner!"

"That is Millicent," he said, gesturing to Millicent, who was surreptitiously gnawing on a corner of Rey's waffle. "I am Brendol, but I am sure your, ah, cousin, was already well informed of that." With this, he turned back to Kylo, frowning, demanding an explanation. 

"I read that article about you in the newspaper," Kylo offered sheepishly. "Like I said, I wanted to thank you for returning my groceries, and Poe in the supermarket told me your name. I just Googled you. It wasn't that hard." 

Ah. Google. The very invention that had caused his father, Brendol Hux the First, to drop off the grid entirely. To the last of Hux's knowledge, his father was somewhere in the Montana wilderness, living off the land in a log cabin. Probably hunted his own game with a rifle he certainly didn't have a permit for. The old chap had been a bit loopy ever since his mother, Mrs. Hux, had left him for a fellow with dial-up, irritated that he wouldn't change his ways. 

"I see," Hux said shortly. That set his mind at ease a tiny bit, and the plate of perfectly made crepes with sliced strawberries and heavy cream the waitress set down in front of him set his mind at ease a bit more. He was well aware that the government used the Internet and social media to track the whereabouts of all its citizens, and surely he was no exception. He cut a neat triangle of crepe, dipped it lightly in a puddle of heavy cream, and popped it into his mouth, chewing and swallowing. He wondered what sort of results would pop up if he plugged Kylo Ren into the search engine. 

"I saw the picture they ran of you in the article," Kylo babbled on, apparently unaware that Hux was no longer concerned with that topic. "It looked like you had just stepped outside to, I dunno, put out the trash or something, and I recognized the background." He smiled lamely, a bit forced, as though he were doing his level best to bare his teeth all at once. "I have a good memory for places and images and stuff like that. I'm a writer. Or at least, trying to be one."

"Right," Hux agreed, chewing and swallowing another bite of crepe. Millicent was making short work of Rey's waffle. And then, because it seemed expected, he offered, "I'm a teacher's assistant. Though you probably already knew that." 

"Teacher's assistant?" Kylo inquired, arching the pierced eyebrow at him. The silver ball bearing glinted in the light. "The article said you were in research." 

"That too," Hux clarified, taking a sip of the 'freshly' sipped orange juice that he knew to be simply Minute Maid concentrate, rehydrated a bit. He'd seen the short-order cook banging the frozen tin of pulped concentrate against the counter. "Lots of TAs do research as well, you know."

"I didn't know," Kylo said, a bit defensively, frowning. "I kind of thought TAs were there to, you know, just do the professor's bitch work." Rey was too engrossed in petting Millicent to notice the obvious curse word. "Maybe have intimate relations with a few students." 

Hux rolled his eyes. Kylo was being so obvious. 

"And," Kylo continued, stuffing another mouthful of limp hash browns into his mouth, "TAs don't usually drive such nice cars." He tossed his fork down on his plate with a clatter, smirking triumphantly across the sticky linoleum table at Hux as though he'd just solved a crime. 

"I just take very good care of my car," Hux explained, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin from the metal dispenser on the side of the table. "You might take a few lessons from that."

It was Kylo's turn to roll his eyes. "Whatever," he grumbled. "You don't have to take care of a little kid."

"True," Hux conceded. He didn't know what exactly Kylo's circumstances were, but certainly they did not prove conducive to the maintenance of Kylo's Toyota, which was glaring at them dirtily from a parking space in front of the cafe. The windshield was positively filthy, the hood was cracked slightly, and the bumper looked to appear in grave danger of falling off at the slightest provocation. Kylo offered no explanation for Rey, and Hux did not inquire further.

* * *

 

"So..." Kylo mumbled, after a few moments of strained silence during which the only sound was the muttered curses of the short-order cook and Rey's excited cooing over Millicent, "you're going shopping, too?"

"I am," Hux said, patting the recyclable bag next to him. Kylo tried not to glare at it too fiercely. 

"I am also," Kylo said. He wanted to kick himself for the redundancy the instant the words were out of his mouth. Of course Hux knew he was going shopping. He'd said 'too.' Hux probably thought he was insufferable idiot, probably thought he was on the level of simpleminded Igor the laboratory assistant. All this, after he'd proclaimed that he was trying to be a writer. "Getting bug spray. Rey found a cockroach in the apartment this morning." He could have kicked himself for that one, too. Hux didn't need to know his itinerary, didn't need to know that his apartment might potentially have an infestation of vermin. 

"Ah. Cockroaches. Vile creatures," Hux agreed, wiping his mouth and placing his fork and knife neatly together on his cleanly swabbed plate. 

"Yeah! Benny saved me!" Rey shouted from beside Hux. Kylo was quite surprised the man hadn't been deafened by now. "It was a big cockroach!" She held out her arms so Hux could see, and Hux feigned an impressed look. 

"It must have been quite big," he said, and Rey nodded seriously before turning back to Millicent, who had gotten into Rey's milk now, too. 

"Benny is very brave," she said, as an afterthought, and Kylo was mildly gratified to see Hux agree with her, no matter how superficial that agreement might be.

* * *

 

After much begging and pleading from Rey that she wanted to spend more time with Millicent, Kylo agreed to give Hux a lift to the grocery store. Hux climbed into the front seat of the Toyota, Millicent hopped in the back, and after only a few disparaging comments about the general state of cleanliness of the inside of Kylo's car, they were off to Maz's.

* * *

 

Poe had strategically gotten to the supermarket very early that morning, one of his warm fleece jackets from his semester abroad in Europe bundled under his arm. He'd unlocked the employee door on the side, had jimmied open Finn's employee locker and had stuffed the jacket inside. He stuck a little Post-it onto the bundled jacket. "Hope it keeps you warm!" it wrote, with a smiley face in Sharpie. 

Finn had arrived an hour and a half ago, seemingly unaware of Poe's beady eyes tracking his every move as he headed to the dairy section, and had yet to reemerge from the refrigerated section. Hopefully he had found the jacket by now. Maybe he was breathing in the smell of Poe's cologne and aftershave, that he'd lightly sprinkled the lining of the jacket with. He'd read somewhere, maybe in Scientific American or something, that attraction was based quite strongly on smell. He hoped it worked. 

His thoughts were distracted from Finn and the jacket by the sight of both Hux and Kylo queueing up in his register. Rey waved up at him, just barely peeping up over the counter. Millicent the cat, whom Poe was well acquainted with (Hux kept pictures of her in his wallet like a particularly loving parent might do with a beloved child), was looped around her neck, dressed in a striped sweater and mittens. He handed Rey a lollipop with an absentminded reminder to please dispose her trash in a trash can outside the grocery store. His hand was not a trash can, and she giggled up at him as if to comment on how silly he was. 

"Together?" he asked, waggling his eyebrows at Kylo, who frowned at him. Kylo was buying no less than fourteen Slim Jims, a bag of potatoes, a rasher of bacon, and a can of bug spray. The industrial stuff. Poe thought to himself if the state of bugs in Kylo's home warranted this sort of stuff, the building should probably be condemned, but he kept his lip buttoned as he waited for Kylo's response. 

"No, no," Kylo snapped, more irritated than the situation called for. "I just gave him a lift."

"Gave him a lift, did you?" Poe teased as he began scanning the items. "Stayed overnight, did you?"

"He did not," Hux cut in smoothly. He caught Poe's eye, a gleam of amusement and mutual mischief in his gaze. "We merely had breakfast together."

Kylo spluttered, enraged, and Poe had to stifle a laugh as he scanned the fourth Slim Jim and tossed it to the left. BB8 beeped a reprimand from the general vicinity of his knee. "He and I just happened to both be at the Waffle Cafe this morning," Kylo snapped, flustered. "And Rey wanted to play with Millicent."

"Okay, okay, man," Poe agreed, holding his hands up to show that he was an innocent party in this whole scenario. "Whatever you say. I'm not one to judge." 

BB8 had barely finished bagging up the multitude of Kylo's Slim Jims before Kylo was snatching up the bags in one hand and Rey's in the other. He dislodged Millicent forcefully, the cat landing gracefully on its mittened paws. "Goodbye," he blurted out to Hux, a bit awkwardly, before storming out of the store. 

"There goes your ride, it looks like," Poe said, with a shrug as he began to scan Hux's items. Luckily for Hux, they were light things. A loaf of whole wheat bread, a bunch of bananas, some plug-in air fresheners. 

"That's fine," Hux said, shrugging smoothly. Millicent meowed as she batted at BB8's glossy display. "It's quite amusing to rile him up, and I was planning on walking to and from the market anyway." 

"It's fun to tease him," Poe agreed, bagging up Hux's purchases neatly. "He takes it all so personally." 

"I look forward to more of it in the future," Hux said, looping the bag over his shoulder and stuffing his wallet back in his pocket. "Lord knows my days could use a bit more amusement." 

Poe made a big show of looking surreptitiously to the left and right to make sure that no one else was in the immediate vicinity before leaning over the counter and murmuring in a stage whisper that Kylo Ren usually shopped on Friday evenings for his groceries. A smile spread over Hux's face, and Poe leaned back at his station, grinning with the knowledge that he had effectively made a partner in crime out of the normally stoic Brendol. 


	4. Cheese

Kylo frowned at the blinking cursor on his Word document. He had been stuck at the transition from the prologue to the introduction for the past four hours, and had already consumed a frightening amount of Monster Ultra Blue and Slim Jims. Rey was watching TV in the living room, babbling to herself, and Kylo was rather irritable about the way her shrill words kept creeping in through the tiny apartment and disrupting his concentration. 

Well. If he was being well and truly honest with himself, Kylo's concentration had just been shattered by the thoughts of Hux. Brendol Hux. What a smug bastard! he thought to himself, frowning as he tapped at the keys savagely, sending strings of jumbled letters flying across the screen before he hit backspace with an equal ferocity and sent them away again. It was all his fault that Kylo couldn't concentrate. 

That, and Rey just absolutely would not shut up about Millicent. She knew that he knew where Hux - and, by extension, Millicent - lived, and it seemed that at least once every waking hour the little girl just had to know if they could perhaps visit Millicent again. By hour five (see, ten AM; Rey had a really unfortunate habit of waking up far too early for Kylo's tastes), Kylo was seriously considering caving in and letting her have her way. 

He wondered how her parents dealt with it. Oh. Wait. They wouldn't be dealing with it for a long time; they had dropped her off unceremoniously with a little duffel bag stuffed to the seams with her favorite toys and books and clothes before jetting off to study coral reefs somewhere off the coast of Australia, which might as well have been an entirely different planet altogether. Perhaps they were taking lessons from Kylo's father, who was a master of disappearing off the very face of the earth when he wanted to.

Ah, well. At least they were paying him quite handsomely. The salary they wired him every month was more than enough to cover groceries and utilities and the rent on this apparently cockroach-infested apartment, with enough left over for Kylo to sock away into a savings fund while he halfheartedly looked for jobs and three-quarter-heartedly worked on his novel. 

Rey screeched with delight from the living room. She was watching The Wiggles. Kylo detested them, so much so that he was considering taking up smoking again if he was forced to listen to those godforsaken jingles even one more time. A headache pulsed in his temples, and he rubbed at them fruitlessly as he stared at the blank screen and tried to think of what to write. 

Suffice it to say, the novel was not coming along well. Rey did not exactly provide a conducive companion to writing anything of merit. 

Not for the first time, Kylo wondered if perhaps he shouldn't have scrapped the whole novel, though he had but a somewhat fleshed out prologue, the first few sentences of a beginning chapter, and an outline that was sketchy at best. He read it over again, feeling more and more irritation with every word. The protagonist was depressed, fled his home and his wife and his dead-end, low-paying job, starting off anew halfway across the country as a field hand, finding beauty in a peach pit. It sounded like something that an undergraduate high on homemade sangria and questionable acid might have written, and Kylo was sorely tempted to click it into the trash can and delete the file right into oblivion. 

But no. One of his professors at the university he'd attended had said that it had held promise, and Kylo was determined to see it through. He lacked staying power, was his main problem, according to this particular professor. His method of operation came in flashes of brilliance and fits of emotion, and what he needed to do was channel that into a steady stream of inspiration, and he would certainly be cranking out novels in no time. Kylo's eyes had watered, tears, perhaps, but he had blamed it on the thick fog of smoke that always seemed to surround his professor, and, clutching his laptop to his chest, had hurried out of the office, flush with the knowledge that someone believed in him, too. 

"Kitty!" Rey shrieked at the screen. Clearly the day was not looking promising for further forays into Kylo's novel to be. "Millie!" 

And then, a second later. "Benny! I wanna go see Millie!" 

Kylo groaned loudly. The headache had blossomed into fruition now, and he popped a few Advils in the fervent hope that they might anesthetize him into some modicum of dull discomfort rather than the sharp pains searing through his mind now. 

"Okay, okay," he muttered, utterly defeated in the face of his cousin's persistence. "We'll go and see Millie, but you have to be on your absolutely best behavior."

* * *

 

As it turned out, Rey's absolutely best behavior was pounding up the steps to Hux's apartment, the soles of her little Keds slapping against the polished hardwood, and then pounding down the carpeted hallway, and then pounding at Hux's door with all the force her little fists could muster. When her initial knocks were unanswered within promptly three seconds of delivery, she pushed her forehead up against the opaque, frosted glass next to the door, cupping her little hands around her eyes as though this would give her the power to see straight through the closed rows of Venetian blinds that protected Hux's privacy. Kylo was of the private opinion that his little cousin would certainly be more than able to give several opera singers runs for their money. 

"Kitty! Hellloooooooo!!!" she screeched through the glass. Doors opened down the hallway, other tenants peering out from their doors to frown disapprovingly at them. Kylo shrugged haplessly at them. Rey was a force to be reckoned with, and upon realizing that quarreling with her was a lost cause, Hux's neighbors popped back through their doors again. 

Hux's door opened precisely a minute and a half after Rey had knocked for the fourth time, and precisely four minutes after Kylo wanted to grab at Rey's hand and frog march her double time back to the car to flee the general vicinity of a place where Hux might be. 

Hux peered out at them, a slight frown creasing his eyebrows. 

Kylo was more than surprised to find the other man still in pajamas. Goodness! It was eleven AM (though, granted, it was a slightly rainy Saturday morning), and Kylo filed away the information for another time, perhaps for future blackmail. Future? No. He shook his head quickly. That would imply they would have a future together, and Kylo was not anticipating that at all. Not the slightest bit. He could hardly see himself being anything more than nemeses slash acquaintances with someone who used reusable bags and who devoted himself to dressing his cat to walk a runway possibly directed by Alexander McQueen. 

"What is it?" Hux asked, not stepping aside to allow them entrance. His arms were folded over his chest, and Kylo's eyes darted straight to the slight bulge of his lean biceps that the white tank top Hux was wearing revealed. "Do you not have anything better to do with your weekends than bothering me?" 

Kylo opened his mouth to protest, but before he could think of anything clever or biting to say, Rey had already wriggled her hand out of his clutches and darted in the small crack between Hux's hips and the door to pound through the apartment. She barely had the presence of mind to kick her little sneakers off, prompted by Hux's disparaging tut and scolding look, and Kylo winced as he heard them thump against the no-doubt-pristine white baseboard in Hux's apartment. 

"Sorry," he said, a bit too late. "Rey wanted to see your cat."

"I see," Hux said, shortly, and then, because he really had no other choice, he stepped aside to allow Kylo to enter. Kylo toed off his high-top red Converse carefully, nudging Rey's shoes into a neat line on the tile floor of the entryway. Hux closed the door behind the two of them, the tumblers in the locks clicking as he slid the bolt shut again, and Kylo had a sudden premonition that this was how a murder mystery might start. 

Unlucky, hapless protagonist follows young cousin into strict TA slash researcher's lair, only to find that his research consists of - 

"Marine biology. Specifically, genetic manipulation of _Roseobacter_ species." 

Kylo jumped. Did an about face to find himself all but nose to nose with Hux, who had apparently crept up silently on him. He backed away quickly. 

"You were muttering to yourself," Hux said, his eyes crinkling at the corners. Amused. He beckoned Kylo to take a seat on the couch, and Kylo sat heavily, watching the little beta fish in its Pier One Imports bowl swimming happily around. "Do you always do that?"

"No," Kylo said, lamely. The fish stared back at him, flaring its gills. It was clearly upset with him, for some reason Kylo could not enumerate. The sounds of Rey giggling wildly to herself spilled down from some other part of the apartment, and Kylo counted both himself and Hux lucky that Millicent wasn't yowling in distress, or anything of the sort. "I was just thinking about a murder mystery."

Hux arched an eyebrow at him as he took a seat next to Kylo on the sofa. This close, Kylo was all too aware of the way Hux gave off a light, warm smell of sleep and musk. A light crop of reddish-gold stubble dusted its way over the sharp lines of his jaw. Had he just woken up? Kylo wondered, and his thoughts ran towards what Hux might look like asleep, what he might look like in bed, the waist of his white tank top riding up just the slightest bit - 

"A murder mystery?" Hux cut in, very much awake, staring at him avidly. "Do you like murder mysteries? Do you write them?"

Kylo was flattered and impressed that Hux had remembered his occupation of choice. Many others might have scoffed at it, at its sort of hit-and-miss quality, and would most likely have forgotten it the instant the topic turned to something else, like oil spills or the utter mess the Republican Party had gotten itself into this election cycle. 

"No, I don't write them. I just like them," he admitted, frowning. Hux's living room was perfectly polished, neat. Minimalist. It almost looked like no one lived there, and that thought sent his imagination spiraling into another thought that perhaps this was all just a ploy. He could see the headlines now, written now in all capitals Arial Narrow on the front page of the New York Times and The Los Angeles Times and probably The Huffington Post: Calm, Mild-Mannered TA and Researcher Lures in Unsuspecting Man and Cousin and Chops Them Up to Feed To His Pet Cat and Fish.

"What do you write, then?" Hux wanted to know, jolting Kylo efficiently from his reverie. 

"I don't know," Kylo sighed, frowning some more and wringing his hands in a mild show of despair. "I haven't been that successful." 

"That's a shame," Hux said, leaning back. The light from the windows pooled in the hollow of his throat, and Kylo tried hard not to stare. He could go into romance writing, the way he was acting, like a lovestruck teenager, and perhaps it wasn't a half bad idea. He'd heard it was quite the lucrative field. He could even write under a pen name, something inconspicuous like Milo Hen, and no one would be the wiser. "Why do you think that is?" 

Perhaps Hux's guard was down. Perhaps he was nicer when he had just woken up. Perhaps he was more inclined to listen, or perhaps Kylo was feeling particularly vulnerable, because he suddenly found himself blurting out anything and everything on his mind to the other man. "My writing gets away from me sometimes," he said, despairingly, announcing his fears to the beta fish; he couldn't bring himself to look Hux in the eye. "I don't know how to get better." 

"Have you tried asking someone else to read your work?" Hux asked, eyeing him. Had he nudged closer in the half-second Kylo had taken his eye off him? Kylo swore he could hear the JAWS theme playing somewhere in the background (and, as a matter of fact, it was; Rey and Millicent had somehow gotten into Hux's DVD collection). "Maybe that might help."

"Maybe," Kylo hedged, chewing at his lip. The water at the very top of the fishbowl was rippling in a way that was reminiscent of Jurassic Park. Rey's resounding squeal of delight from Hux's bedroom ripped Kylo back to his senses, and he abruptly got to his feet, almost knocking his knees against the edge of the coffee table and almost sending the artfully arranged fishbowl spinning to its doom on the floor. "Sorry. I've got to get Rey, don't want her getting into all your stuff." 

Hux followed him up the small flight of stairs to his bedroom, close on his heels, to find Rey wrapped in a little mummy-like shroud of Hux's bedsheets. One thousand count, it looked like to Kylo, who all but frothed at the mouth with jealousy. Clearly becoming a graduate student/TA had done wonders for Hux's salary. Millicent was mewing at Rey as they flicked through the scene selection on Hux's flat-screen plasma television. 

Kylo looked cautiously at Hux to gauge his reaction out of the corner of his eye, but Hux was just leaning against the doorjamb, smiling in a sort of nostalgic, lenient sort of way, his freckled arms crossed over his chest, and Kylo could have waxed poetic about him for at least a good chapter or so. He pinched his thigh through the thin pocket of his jeans, hard, to try and snap himself out of it, but failed miserably.

"Sorry about this," he said, gesturing to Rey, who was watching JAWS with wide eyes and an open mouth. He'd probably have a hell of a time getting her into the bath tonight. "You know how five year olds get." 

"No worries," Hux said, magnanimously, and Kylo could, frighteningly, slowly but surely find the initial hatred he'd held for Hux dissolving into the ether to be replaced with something that might, under the application of a few gin and tonics, be construed as friendliness. 

This feeling was only cemented by the fact that Hux fed them lunch, toasted ham and cheese sandwiches (though, of course, Hux claimed they were raclette, combined with a really fancy accent)  that had Rey squealing with delight. Kylo left Hux's apartment in the late afternoon, a giddy Rey hanging around his neck like a particularly affectionate lemur, and every step back to his cockroach-infested domicile made him think of Hux and, perhaps, in some little-thought-of part of his mind, how he could puff himself up in the other man's presence. 

He was confident that a basic knowledge of a simple wine list would bring him up in Hux's regard, and resolved to start that very week. 


	5. Wine

"Wine?" Poe arched a freshly threaded brow at Kylo across the sticky laminate counter on which Rey was banging her latest acquisition Poe's treasure trove of candy. The dark green bottles sat patiently on the conveyor belt, all six waiting to be scanned, and Poe knew quite well that Maz's was currently doing a promotion on alcohol, a 30% discount on the purchase of six bottles from the 'Sale' section. "You drink wine?"

Likewise, Poe also was all too aware of how Maz had bellowed over the intercom that he and Finn needed to get to the alcohol section right away to rearrange it; she definitely could not be selling 20 year old Merlots for the price of an Applebee's dinner. As he'd huffed his way over to the back of the store, he was grateful that he'd had the foresight to get his eyebrows threaded that weekend; they had been getting out of control, and were starting to look like something the neighbor's dog might drag in. 

He'd beamed at Finn. Finn had beamed back, made a comment about how Poe looked absolutely radiant, and Poe had all but swooned all over the pinot noirs. (If Poe were to take off the rose colored glasses, he would have found that Finn had actually only said a simple 'Good morning.' As it was, the rosy lenses were affixed firmly to his eyes.) 

Kylo was glaring at him over the counter, his biceps bulging as he folded his arms across his chest impatiently, but Poe couldn't help but notice that the glare was tinged with something that looked suspiciously close to embarrassment. "What of it?" he barked, louder than he'd intended. BB8 beeped admonishingly at him, and Rey screamed up at Benny that he ought to use his inside voice before turning back to Poe with a sticky chocolate smile and informing him that her beloved Benny was "buying wines because he likes Huxy!" 

Poe stared at the little girl for a moment, trying to process the information. Kylo's glare turned positively venomous, but clearly Rey had had more than enough practice deflecting her older cousin's ire, and Poe longed to reach over the counter, take her into his arms, and pump her for more information. He smelled fresh gossip, and could hardly wait to hear the whole story. He hastily handed over another Tootsie Roll, in the hopes that perhaps this could get Rey to fork over more details. From the mouths of babes, indeed!

"Huxy, hmm?" Poe asked, unable to contain his smile as he looked across at Kylo. Two spots of color had come into the other man's cheeks, and Poe was hard pressed to stifle a laugh. Had it not been for BB8 jabbing him in the soft part of the back of his knee, he might have done just that. "I see you've become close friends, then," he settled for instead as he reached to his right and picked up the first bottle of wine to examine the paper label. 

He frowned. Set it aside. Picked up the next bottle, repeated the process. With every bottle he set aside, he tutted lightly, the customers behind Kylo grumbled and went off to another register, and Rey pelted BB8 with the leftover lollipop stick, which stuck to his glossy display and had him beeping in indignation. Miss Vesuvius the espresso machine would never see him fit as a potential suitor this way, he informed Poe, who looked down and promised him that he would set the bagging robot straight before his shift ended. 

"What's wrong?" Kylo asked, a bit uncertainly now. "Why are you putting all those bottles aside?" 

"I don't think Hux will like these," Poe said, shrugging as he finished putting them aside and continued to ring up the rest of Kylo's groceries. Ah, here was more standard Kylo fare. There was a week's worth of Hungry Mans in here, three family sized bags of barbecue potato chips, a tub of chocolate ice cream, and two six-packs from the make-your-own display in the front of the store. Poe was, somehow, unsurprised to find a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon in one of the slots. 

"What do you mean, he won't like them?" Kylo barked again, and then, as though realizing he was falling for the bait Poe had so cleverly/unwittingly set for him, he backpedaled as though his life depended on it. "No, I mean, I'm not buying them for Hux or anything!" he shouted across the counter. The little placard advertising fundraising for the local Boy Scouts troop toppled dangerously with the volume of his words, but Poe held his ground. It was easy to see how Kylo and Rey were related, he thought to himself as he reached up to surreptitiously rub at his aching eardrums. "I just want to learn more about wine! You know, sophistication and all that s -" he flicked a quick glance at Rey, who had suddenly gone silent and was staring back up at him intently, waiting for him to drop the bombshell that would justify her jabbing him in the ribs with a little fist - "that stuff," he finished lamely, instead, and Rey's face fell. Poe plied her with another Tootsie Roll, which she accepted gleefully, and the sounds of frantic smacking filled the void of silence Kylo had left behind. 

"Right, right, of course," Poe said, wincing as he felt the onset of mild tinnitus settling in. "Well, these wines are a bit...how shall I say it? Shallow? They're not full-bodied at all. The experience certainly won't be the same as if you purchased something nicer." 

Kylo frowned across the counter at him. Poe wanted to warn him that his face would get stuck like that if he continued scowling, but decided that his advice on that front was, perhaps, unwarranted. 

"But these are six for twenty," he protested, "and I have a coupon!" He brandished a coupon in front of Poe's face that he pulled out from the creaking depths of his wallet. 

"This is a coupon for Franzia," Poe said, pushing it back across the counter at him, and then, seeing the sudden gleam in Kylo's eye, he frantically added, "But I really wouldn't recommend that. I can assure you that boxed wine is definitely not the height of sophistication." 

Kylo tucked the coupon back into his wallet, folded his arms across his chest again, and looked at Poe expectantly. Poe reached up to flick the light on his register off. 

"Here, why don't..." He would have to tread carefully, but diplomacy did not exactly run in the Dameron family, and he picked his words out tentatively, afraid of offending Kylo any more than he already had. "Why don't I go in the back to pick out something nice for you?" 

Kylo was starting to bristle; Poe could feel the tension mounting between them, like a wild boar about to charge at a hapless safari tourist who had gotten lost. It was evident which of them was which. 

He held up his hands in supplication, fearing that he would need hearing aids at the ripe age of 26. "Trust me, I took a few sommelier classes half a year ago." (He hadn't; he'd read about it in a catalogue, but Poe had more than adequate knowledge of a basic wine list.) Kylo looked mollified, and Poe sighed with relief, thinking that perhaps he would be in the clear now, when Kylo reached out and caught his wrist, pulling him back. 

"Wait just a second." Was the boar preparing for its second wind? Poe feared for his life, and was appropriately confused when Kylo thrust the tub of chocolate ice cream into his arms. "It'll melt," he said, by way of explanation. "It's probably already half melted from all the yapping you've been doing."

Poe opened his mouth to protest, but Rey looked up at him pleadingly. "Mista Poe," she wheedled, and Poe was done for. Finished. Out on the floor. Fatality. "Pweez?" 

"Alright, alright," he said, snatching the ice cream back and beginning his trek to the back of the store, leaving Kylo and Rey standing at the register to stare at BB8, who was frantically trying to polish his front display in the small strip of mirror the cash register offered. Rey crowned the bagging robot with a small cap of half-chewed Tootsie Roll, which went unnoticed in BB8's frantic attempts to remove the sticky residue from his camera. His limbs hadn't been engineered for cleaning himself, and he was in quite the predicament. A wistful glance over at the in-store cafe showed that Miss Vesuvius was perhaps getting too close with the KitchenAide stand mixer, and BB8 puffed himself up with righteous glory and reapplied himself to his cleaning frenzy with a vigor that had never before been seen, and would never be replicated, in another bagging droid.

* * *

 

Meanwhile, Poe's footsteps squeaked on the freshly waxed tiles as he headed back to the wine section, the ice cream cold and chilly in his hands. He'd had the best idea ever since passing the cake mix section of the Baking Needs aisle, and Kylo and Rey had unwittingly handed it to him on a silver platter. 

He would pick up the wine, a nice, full-bodied Cabernet from France that he felt confident Hux would certainly enjoy, and then he would head to the frozen/refrigerated sections to get a new tub of ice cream. He had seen Finn stocking inventory there not even a few minutes ago, and though romantic fraternizing of all kinds was strictly forbidden in several postulates in the employee handbook, Poe had an ironclad excuse. He'd just go there, casually drop off the ice cream, maybe comment on how cold Finn looked, ask with a waggle of his eyebrows if perhaps Finn wouldn't mind some help warming up. And then if Maz or any of their other coworkers happened to stumble upon this fraternization, Poe could hold up the now half-melted carton of ice cream and exclaim that he had a valid reason for being there, the customer came first and all that other stuff. employee Handbook, Section 14, Clause 18C. 

Yes, Poe thought excitedly, almost punching the air with glee. This could work! It really could! 

He hurried to the back of the store where the alcohols were kept, grabbed a bottle of the Cabernet Sauvignon that he had been looking for, and hurried back eagerly to the ice cream section. Much to his delight, Finn was still there, rubbing his hands together and sorting pints of Ben and Jerry's into the racks with their respective labels. 

"Hey!" he boomed, perhaps louder than he intended; everyone in the aisle turned to look suspiciously at him. Were the onsets of early-age deafness already setting in? he wondered to himself as he made his way to Finn's side. He certainly hoped not. "Hey, buddy!" he said, beaming widely at Finn, who smiled hesitantly back at him as he plopped a pint of Phish Food into the rack. 

And then, oh, horror of horrors, Poe's mind went blank. His brilliant scheme had flung itself out the window once he'd caught sight of Finn's bright, innocent smile. Gone was his plot, gone was Poe the Pick-Up Man. He stood there, gaping like a guppy, until Finn had the prescience to ask him if he needed anything. 

"Oh, no, no," he said, before remembering the tub of chocolate ice cream in his hands. "Oh, I mean, yes, actually," he said, flustered as he stuffed the tub of ice cream into the freezer past Finn's outstretched hands. "A customer wanted me to find some good wine for them and asked me to get them another tub of ice cream. They were afraid this one would melt." Poe looked at the gallon of Breyer's ice cream, so out of place with all the neat little pints of Ben and Jerry's, and could have slapped himself. Surely an action like that would have Finn thinking he was sloppy, a vagabond out of control, and he really could not be having that. He wanted to make the best impression possible. 

He leaned into the freezer again, grabbing the tub of ice cream back out. "Haha," he laughed nervously. "Silly me, I guess I'll just go put this in the appropriate section where it belongs! I'm a very organized person!" 

Finn smiled weakly at him, and Poe wanted to slap himself again. 

"I love chocolate ice cream," he babbled, staring at Finn and feeling like an utter madman, an utterly raving lunatic just escaped from the asylum. "And hot chocolate fudge! And chocolate is really, um -" Finn's smile had disappeared, and he was just looking at Poe curiously, like one might look at a particularly fascinating, hairy mold that had suddenly appeared on one's loaf of sourdough - "um, I'll just be going I guess! Customer service with a smile and all that!" Poe's cheeks were aching from the forced smile he had pasted on his face, and he was aware he was using way too many exclamation points, but what was done was done, and he did an abrupt 180, nearly colliding with a hapless old lady who was reaching into the adjacent freezer in search of the lemon bars. 

"Sorry, sorry," he said, patting her kindly on the arm and fetching the lemon bars for her before he darted off to replace the gallon of melting chocolate ice cream, all but flinging it into the appropriate freezer and grabbing a new one before rushing back to his abandoned register. So great was his hurry that he didn't notice Finn smiling at his retreating back fondly. The old lady smiled kindly after him as well, with her rheumy eyes, and then immediately turned to Finn to yell up at him that she had wanted the orange creamsicles.

* * *

 

"Here you go," Poe said, flushed and out of breath as he ran back to the register, where BB8 was now sporting several stubby pieces of Tootsie Roll on the top of his head. Goodness. He'd have to take care of that later, or the bagging droid would pitch a fit, would probably go on strike (see: bagging everyone's groceries in plastic if they'd asked for paper, in paper if they'd asked for plastic. This was the true extent of the rebellion). Poe handed over the bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon to Kylo, who scrutinized it carefully, though Poe was sure he was simply reading the one-sentence description - Full-bodied, with fruity undertones and a slight aftertaste of honey - on the paper label. "This one's quite good."

"Right, if you're sure," Kylo said hesitantly, and allowed Poe to scan the bottle and hand it carefully to BB8. Still unaware of his new chocolaty headpieces, the droid placed it equally as carefully in a padded cylindrical case used specifically for bagging wine. "You'd better be right about this," Kylo warned as Poe finished scanning the chocolate ice cream and signaled Kylo to swipe his credit card. 

"I'm sure," Poe agreed, helping load the bags into the cart and patting Rey fondly on the head, leaning in to whisper that she perhaps should not be so mean to Mr. BB8 anymore. She giggled, gave him a small kiss on the nose, and told him very seriously that she would consider Mista Poe's request.

* * *

 

Hux frowned as he checked the address Kylo had hastily scribbled down on a small scrap of paper for him, checked the address of the apartment buildings he was standing in front of, checked the paper again. There was no doubt about it. This was indeed the place that Kylo had invited him to dinner in exchange for the lunch Hux had fed them, and Hux vaguely wondered why he'd ever agreed to the whole thing. 

He walked up the stairwell, frowning at the piles of litter swept into the corners, dog fur and gum wrappers and a generous sprinkling of dust that tickled at his nose. The pink box he'd picked up from the bakery quivered in his hands as he tried to fight back a sneeze. 

He buzzed the doorbell to the side of Kylo's door, and smiled to himself as he heard Rey's resounding shriek of excitement from inside, followed by Kylo's indistinct bellow. A moment later his attention was drawn to the narrow window to the side of the door. The Venetian blinds flickered somewhere in the vicinity of Hux's knee, and Rey's large eyes peeped out before she whisked away again, shrieking that Huxy was here, Huxy was here, and he might have a cake!

Hux couldn't contain his smile, and was still grinning when Kylo opened the door, looking harried, a dusting of flour in his hair and a smudge of what was either tomato sauce or blood on his chin. 

"Hi, sorry about that," he huffed, out of breath as he ushered Hux inside. "Rey doesn't open the door, even if she knows already who it is." He flung a pointed glance at his cousin.

"Stranger danger!" she sang at the top of her lungs. Hux was convinced he saw a small shower of plaster rain down from the ceiling. 

"Hux is not a stranger," Kylo scolded her. "You've met him! You liked him!" 

"It's perfectly alright," Hux agreed amiably, handing over the bakery box and watching as Kylo put it into the fridge, which, from his vantage point, he could see was cramped with energy drinks and leftover Chinese takeout boxes. "Gotta be safe, and all that stuff, you know." 

"Right, right," Kylo agreed, straightening up and shutting the fridge door. Something was baking in the oven, something that actually didn't smell half-bad. Hux could detect rising dough, the clean scent of mozzarella, the earthy, juicy smell of tomatoes ripe off the vine, and, admittedly, he had an eye on the oven, curious as to what was inside, as he made polite chat with Kylo. 

"Sorry, it's nothing much," Kylo said, a few moments later, sliding the pizza out of the oven and onto a chopping board with a flourish. "I'll just slice this and then we can eat," he said, smiling at Hux over his freckled shoulder. He was wearing a black tank top, and Hux felt severely overdressed, in a slate blue dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbow and artfully crumpled dark wash jeans. "There's wine," Kylo added, "but it would be a great help if you could open it, I'm not much good at those things."

"Right, of course," Hux said, jumping at the chance to be useful; it was a habit his mother had drilled into him from a very early age, and there was no wine bottle, no stubborn cork, that Hux could not tug out. The wine in question was standing on the counter, a Cabernet Sauvignon that Hux was pleasantly surprised to see. He'd had it before, and had found it rather lovely. Kylo certainly didn't look the type to like wine, Hux thought as he popped out the cork expertly and decanted a splash into two wine glasses set aside for the occasion, ignoring the water stains around the rims, but there were surprises every day.

They sat down to eat at the rickety dining room table. Hux noted that the crust was unusually hard, of an odd texture that he had never before encountered in his life, and watched warily as Rey picked at the toppings and nibbled only at the topmost layer of the crust. even more confusing was the way Kylo did the same thing, instead of picking up the slice or cutting it with the knives and forks that had, apparently, been laid out only for show. 

"er, why are you eating like that?" Hux asked, frowning curiously. 

In response, Kylo lifted up his slice of pizza. The cardboard slider the pre-baked pizza had come on was all but glued to the bottom. 

"How else would you eat it?" Kylo asked, quirking an unruly eyebrow at him. "You can't eat cardboard."

"Yeah, silly!" Rey shouted up at him, beaming. Her cheeks were stained with tomato sauce.

"You...you do know you don't bake the cardboard with it, right?" Hux asked. Kylo spat out the mouthful of wine he'd had in his mouth as though Hux had personally offended his mother. Before he had the time to look too hurt, Hux rushed to reassure him, unsure of why he was doing such a thing. "It's okay, it's a common mistake," he hastened, seeing Kylo's brooding expression. "And I mean, I guess it adds a certain structural integrity to the pizza itself, but -"

"Nah, it's alright, I fucked up," Kylo said, ignoring Rey's scandalized gasp and plucking off another string of cheese. "Just eat the top. It's perfectly good."

Hux did as requested. The wine was excellent, just the right vintage to round off a nice week, and the vanilla cake he'd purchased from the bakery was paired with a few generous scoops of chocolate ice cream from the store, and all in all, it wasn't half bad at all. He found himself smiling and laughing at Kylo's jokes, and, before he knew it, Rey had arranged a playdate for herself and Millie the following week. 

Hux was surprised to find that he had no such objections, whatsoever, but he chalked his recent goodwill up to Kylo's admittedly impeccable taste in wine. 


	6. Paper

As it turned out, when Hux got home after the meeting with Kylo, which he still couldn't quite put a name to, he looked at the pocket planner on his coffee table to pencil in the next week's appointment with the two of them and found that he had, as usual, overbooked himself. The following Wednesday afternoon, during which Rey wanted to play with Millicent, Hux had to be at a research symposium for the undergraduates at the university, and there was really no way he could get out of attending. He had already RSVP'd, weeks and weeks ago, and there had been the promise of free food and beverages for those in attendance. 

He frowned in consternation. Millicent purred and rubbed up against his left leg. This was certainly quite the pickle he'd found himself in, and though he knew Kylo's address, he did not have his phone number nor any other way of contacting him. He supposed he could write a letter, but Hux was vaguely distrustful of government services such as the postal system, and he had no doubt that the instant he popped his missive in the letterbox, the inept mail carriers would instead take it halfway to Timbuktu before realizing their mistake and, more importantly, the blatant lack of appropriate postage. It would be a waste, and perhaps slightly inappropriate, to head back over to Kylo's derelict apartment buildings just to tell him that they would have to arrange another time. 

But Hux had graduated magna cum laude, and no sooner than two minutes later, a brilliant idea had popped into his mind, starting with the way they'd first met in the parking lot at Maz's. He'd just tell Poe Dameron to tell Kylo about his scheduling conflict, because surely Kylo would need groceries some time soon, probably within the next few days, if the state of his refrigerator was any indication. That's it. He would leave a note with Poe, just in case the cashier forgot the exact details of the message, and so there would be no room for confusion. 

Yes, that would be just the ticket. Hux rummaged through his kitchen drawer, sifting through catalogues of clipped coupons that he fully intended to use at a later date, looking for a pen and ripping the top piece of paper off a pocket-sized yellow legal notepad. He printed a few sentences on the page, neatly, before folding it into precise squares and tucking it into his wallet in front of his credit card so he would remember to hand it to Poe when he went to Maz's for his weekly groceries. He hoped the other man would be there, and was reliable. But Maz's was a reputable place, with an owner and namesake who was a shrewd business dealer featured on several occasions in the financial section of the local newspaper that Hux followed with no small amount of interest, and he had no doubt that she would hire none less than the best, most diligent and trustworthy employees. 

Assured of the foolproof nature of his plan, Hux smiled to himself, put the pen and notepad back in the drawer, and headed off to the shower to start getting ready for a quiet evening in.

* * *

 

Kylo, in contrast, was not having a quiet evening in at all. Rey had somehow gotten into the pink bakery box containing the remains of the cake while Kylo had been taking a bath, and was all but bouncing off the walls with the frightening amount of frosting she had consumed. Kylo could barely hear himself think, what with Rey's giggles and nonsense babbling as she held an impromptu tea party in the corner with some raggedy dolls and what looked suspiciously like a giant plastic cockroach stuffed into a frilly napkin for a party dress. Kylo had no desire to examine this latest addition to the household too closely, and he pulled a pair of supposedly noise-canceling headphones over his ears as he sat down at his laptop to try and write. 

The noise-canceling headphones were clearly not all that noise-canceling, and he could still hear each and every one of Rey's piercing syllables as she offered little thimblefuls of Hawaiian punch around the deflated-looking ottoman that served as her tea table. Kylo frowned to himself, typing nonsense into the as-of-yet blank document before sighing and deleting all of it with a finger jabbed firmly onto the backspace key. 

His thoughts wandered to Hux, going over each and every detail of their interaction, scrutinizing it and analyzing it with a depth and perseverance that Kylo had only managed to uphold for one semester of critical theory. There was something charming, endearing about Hux that Kylo had noted while Hux had been here, sitting in this very apartment, picking at the cardboard-crusted pizza and complimenting Kylo on his choice of wines. Kylo thought he could probably overlook the whole organic-foods, no trans-fats, reusable-bags aspects of the man in favor of the other aspects of Hux he had discovered that day. One had to be willing to make compromises, and Kylo was ready and able to do just that. He thought dreamily to the following Wednesday, when he would see Hux again, wondering what they would do, wondering if he could advance their relationship in any way, shape, or form. 

Hux seemed like the kind of person one might want to have around, and Kylo would have been lying if he'd said he didn't want to have Hux be a part of his life. He was an interesting character, if anything, and Kylo was certain Hux had more going for him than bacteria research, a taste for wines that weren't sold six for twenty, and an exotic shorthair cat that looked as though it received daily visits to the groomers. 

There had to be more than that, and Kylo was determined to get to the bottom of it.

* * *

 

Poe looked at the neatly folded piece of paper Hux handed over to him as he slung his reusable bags over his shoulder. "What is this?" he asked, looking down at it in curiosity and wondering if perhaps it was an IOU. Maybe Hux was in some sort of credit card trouble, racking up huge amounts of debt, you know how those academic types could be, and he was handing Poe a discreet message to inform him of the fact without having to undergo the embarrassing actions of saying it aloud. Maybe he already knew that his credit card would be rejected, maybe he was already over drafting his accounts, but he couldn't bring himself to buy the store brand chicken breasts over the organic. 

The resulting answer was even more surprising than this, and Poe was nearly bowled over by the revelation. 

"I would like for you to give this to Kylo Ren when he comes in," Hux enunciated, slowly and clearly, as though making sure that Poe understood every single syllable. "I am unable to get into contact with him at the present moment, but I would like to ensure that he receives this regarding an appointment the two of us have next week, and you seem like a rather trustworthy fellow." 

"Thank you?" Poe said, a bit uncertainly as he pocketed the note. "I'll make sure to, er, do just that. An appointment, you say?"

"An appointment," Hux confirmed, but a pink blush on his face betrayed his clinical tone of forced disinterest. 

"Right, then," Poe replied, wondering when Kylo and Hux's movie on Lifetime would come out. He could smell the romantic comedy from miles away, and he was certain anyone with half a brain would agree with him. "I'll make sure to give it to him for your appointment." 

He could hardly wait until Hux had exited through the automatic doors before reaching into his pocket and eagerly unfolding the piece of paper. The message was written in neat capital letters, and Poe had no problem reading it. 

"Kylo - Millicent and I unfortunately have a research symposium to attend this coming Wednesday, and will consequently be unable to meet you and Rey. A list of my other free times is available below. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. Sincerely, Brendol Hux II." 

Below this ran a little list of times and days, extending over into the next Saturday, and Poe tutted to himself as he pocketed the note again. The message itself was clear enough, but the method of writing was in sore need of some assistance. Poe would have been, frankly, horrified to receive a message such as that one from a potential paramour, and he took it upon himself to modify the message a little bit. 

Customer satisfaction was a guarantee, after all, and Poe was just doing his job to the best of his abilities.

* * *

 

The man had a suspicious look about his face that Kylo deemed untrustworthy on first glimpse. He was smirking like he had some sort of secret, and Kylo wondered if perhaps Dameron's forays with the hapless individual managing register 8 were the cause of this. It was hardly a secret, and even Kylo, oblivious though he was to most sorts of social interaction, had deduced it quickly after a few instances in which he had had to force Dameron's attention away from the other employee's actions (see: restocking the pastry display in the front of the store, tying a balloon to a crying child's wrist, etc.). 

"What is it?" he asked suspiciously as Poe grinned and scanned a box of Popsicles that Rey grabbed the instant it was out of Poe's hands, clutching it in her greedy little fingers. The bagging droid beeped disapprovingly, and Kylo agreed wholeheartedly with the sentiment. Rey was hyper enough as it was, but she had already torn off the perforated strip and was reaching into the box for a Popsicle even as they spoke. 

"Hux wanted me to give you a message," Poe said, waggling his eyebrows deviously across the register at Kylo and absentmindedly handing Rey a grape lollipop which she summarily stuck into her mouth at the first opportunity. "Looks like you two are getting pretty close, wouldn't you say?" 

"A message?" Kylo's ears pricked up at the idea that Hux had been thinking about him. "What does it say?" 

"Oh, just that he's got some sort of research symposium to attend on Wednesday." Kylo's face fell; he had been looking forward to seeing Hux again that day, and had even taken it upon himself to Yelp good bakeries in the area so he could bring a cake of some sort to Hux's place. He had even settled on a nice tiramisu that would set him out a good $25, but the reviews and snapshots of the cake in question had looked like something that would be right up Hux's alley. "But he said you're more than welcome to meet him and Millicent there, and he would like to have dinner with you and Rey after the symposium concludes." 

Kylo's expression brightened noticeably, and the fog of gloom and despair that had set itself over the other shoppers and employees in the nearby vicinity suddenly lifted. They looked around curiously, but seeing nothing amiss, continued about their business. 

"And what time would that be?" Kylo wanted to know. "And where is the symposium being held?"

Poe had taken it upon himself to look up the relevant information, which he relayed quickly to Kylo without an iota of hesitation. "The symposium is set to conclude at 7 PM, though it might run over a little bit. Those academic types, you know." Kylo nodded uncertainly, hanging on to Poe's every word. "It'll be held in the Stabler Auditorium on the university's campus. Hard to miss, pretty big building with these marble statues in the arches. Signs everywhere."

"Right," Kylo agreed, pulling out his phone and hastily typing a note to himself, fervently praying that he would remember. WEDNESDAY STABLER AUDITORIUM 7 PM HUX. He set an alarm just for good measure. "Thanks."

"Of course," Poe agreed graciously, smiling and loading the paper bags into the back of the cart. Rey reached out to pat his cheek with a plump hand already sticky with cherry flavoring, informing him quite seriously that he was a Good Person, and Poe swore he could hear BB8 cackling to himself under the counter as Kylo absentmindedly wheeled the cart away. 

"I'm doing God's work," he informed the robot sternly, but the droid was apparently unconvinced of the existence of any higher beings, and only beeped up at him that he should probably wash his face well before his scheduled reconnaissance mission (see: coffee break) with Finn. 


	7. Cheese Crackers

Hux sighed and folded his arms over his chest, rocking absentmindedly back and forth in his metal folding chair as he waited impatiently for the symposium to end. The undergraduate currently on stage was far too self-absorbed for Hux's taste, quibbling on about his experimental sets of data involving the digestion and psychological response of zebrafish after being fed a high-glucose diet. He had lost track of the purpose of the research ages ago, and he could hardly keep himself from glancing at his watch every two minutes in the hopes that perhaps the symposium might be over. 

It was currently 7:03, and Hux wanted to kill someone. It would take 13 minutes to bicycle back to his apartment, assuming the traffic was similar to other Wednesday evenings of Hux's past. It would take 4 minutes to lock up his bicycle in the gated courtyard, gather his mail and sift through it for junk and/or particularly interesting coupons, and another 3 to let himself into his flat and make sure Millicent was set for the evening with enough food and water and a comfortable assortment of plush toys. Five minutes to heat a pre-made dinner in the microwave and uncork a bottle of wine, and Hux would have an entire five minutes to sit down on his sofa, take a breather, and click on the television in preparation for his nightly Jeopardy. He had been greatly looking forward to tonight; three former champions were supposedly returning for a chance to win again, and Hux had followed the career of one of these winners (see: junior associate at a prestigious law firm) with great relish, reading up on the case details and opening statements and anything that he could legally (and, sometimes illegally, with the use of a series of proxies and some somewhat unsavory websites) get his hands on. The man was nothing short of a legal genius, and Hux admired him greatly. 

But this researcher, this child, was taking up his precious minutes, and Hux had to curl the fingers of his hands into tight fists on his lap to keep himself from grinding his molars in frustration. Was the student one of the students he TA'd for in microbiology lab? Yes. Was Hux considering being harsher than normal when grading said student's formal lab report, worth a hefty twenty percent of his laboratory grade? Also yes. 

Hux kept a very strict timetable, and Hux did not, unless under circumstances of death or severe injury, miss Jeopardy. 

At last the boy seemed to be wrapping up, at no less than a harrying 7:14, and Hux was considering skipping the mail and the wine, putting dinner off until a commercial break, and was thoroughly engaged in the process of pushing and shoving his way out of the auditorium from the group of people thronged around the dessert reception outside when he heard someone shouting his name.

* * *

 

Rey had seen the dessert table, laden with piles of fruit (blatantly ignored) and plates of brownies, complete with a chocolate fountain, and Kylo had been powerless to stop her. He had arrived at the university eighteen minutes ago, maneuvering his beat-up Toyota into a tight parking spot between a Prius and a Porsche with only two new dents on the driver's side door to show for his troubles. He considered himself a great success, especially after finding out that parking was free after five PM on weekdays, and whistled jauntily to himself while holding Rey's hand and reminding her not to feed the campus fauna (see: squirrels and bloated pigeons) any of her cheese crackers. 

The buildings were done in Gothic architecture, their soaring, ivy-covered spires and marble statues tucked away in the frescoes reminding Kylo of his own university days. He had majored in comparative literature, and if he was being well and truly honest with himself, he figured that he'd gone to roughly about 40% of his classes throughout his entire time as an undergraduate. Hux was, by his own accounts, doing something much more noble with his time on campus, and Kylo milled about the quad aimlessly until a small poster tacked to a signpost caught his eye, directing him towards Stabler Auditorium, which appeared exactly as Poe promised it would. 

Tall, monolithic, forbidding almost. The statues of famous scientists and other people Kylo didn't know and/or care about glared down at him in the setting dusky twilight, as though to remind him that he did not belong here and that he was behaving somewhat irrationally. The university, a central player in the region's scientific research, was no place for a would-be, as of yet unpublished writer and his loyal sidekick, who currently had processed cheese smeared over her cheeks. 

And then Rey had seen the dessert reception. That had been the beginning of the end. 

She had scampered over quickly to the table, pouting up at the two bored-looking students who were manning it, and through some grace of God, managed to finagle her way into filling a plate for herself. 

Kylo started to apologize, was about to tell Rey to put some of her ill-gotten loot back, but then the doors of the auditorium had opened and people started streaming out of the building, stampeding quickly towards the dessert table. A flash of copper-colored hair caught his eye, and he shouted for Hux, waving the other man over as he dragged Rey away from the scene of the crime. The scientists and undergraduate researchers were pushing and shoving each other out of the disorderly queue for brownies, and Kylo wanted no part of that. 

Hux looked more than a little hassled as he pushed and shoved his own way out of the swarm of sweet seekers, and once they had retreated to an iron bench a safe distance from the carnage, Kylo turned to look at him with a smile, nervousness starting to creep into the pit of his belly. What if Hux had told him about the research symposium because he didn't want to see Kylo on Wednesday night? What if Hux had some prior engagement with someone who was younger, more attractive, with an actual job prospect? The thought almost had Kylo foaming at the mouth, itching to slap himself for thinking in such a silly manner. 

He didn't even like Hux. Not like that. The two of them were just friends, and the fact that they had had dinner together, and Hux had brought a cake in a pink bakery box, and that Kylo had reservations for a quirky little Greek place three blocks away, were irrelevant. 

Rey beamed stickily up at Hux through a mouthful of chocolate cake, baring little fangs that were currently in desperate need of a thorough brushing. Kylo shuddered at the sight, and Rey promptly closed her mouth. 

"I wasn't expecting to see you here," Hux said, an eyebrow raised, but a faint smile playing around the corners of his mouth. Kylo had to admit that he looked quite dapper, in a white, unwrinkled dress shirt with a crisply starched collar and a dark emerald tie that did wonders for his eyes. 

And then it hit him. Hux hadn't been expecting him, despite the fact that Poe had assured Kylo that that was what Hux indeed wanted. A hint of anger started to make itself known towards the well-meaning cashier, but he decided to play it out. See where it led him. Perhaps something favorable might come of the exchange. After all, Hux wasn't exactly saying no, and though he looked like he was in quite a hurry to get somewhere, he was still sitting down and absentmindedly ignoring the way Rey was smearing chocolaty frosting all over the rails of the bench. 

"Oh. I. Hmm." Despite his desire to be the author of the next Great American Novel, Kylo found himself at a profound loss for words. He stammered through a halfhearted excuse, something along the lines of how he was just in the area and figured maybe he'd check out the symposium, Rey had seen that there was free dessert being offered and really how could he say no to that face - 

The crease between Hux's eyebrows relaxed, smoothed out, and Kylo could have wept with relief. "I see. Would this free dessert have spoilt Miss Rey's appetite for dinner?" 

Rey looked up, caught red-handed. Or chocolate-handed, as the case might have been. Kylo foresaw a very long bath time in the near future. 

"It would not have," he said decisively, smiling over Rey's head at Hux. "As a matter of fact, I was wondering if maybe you wouldn't want to go have dinner with us? We were just going to head over to this little Greek place a few blocks from here..."

Hux's eyes lit up. "Delfi Blue?" he asked, looking almost manic. Kylo nodded, uncertainly at first, but then more surely when Hux's grin showed no sign of dissipating any time soon. "I'd be more than happy to accompany you." 

It was with no small amount of glee, and half a packet of jumbo sized wet wipes, that Kylo led Hux and Rey back to the Toyota (which had received a parking ticket regardless of the sign), and drove them to the restaurant.

* * *

 

Hux was all but in heaven. The vinaigrette on his starter salad was delicious, the tomatoes plump and sweet, the lettuce crisp and buttery, the sparkling water was perfectly carbonated, and the flat screen television over the dark oak-paneled bar was showing Jeopardy. They had made it to Delfi Blue with a few moments to spare, just in time for the episode to begin playing, and Hux gnawed frantically on a wedge of pita bread as Ricardo, the long-time champion he himself was rooting for, answered yet another question correctly. He was all but on the edge of his seat, and he vowed to make it up somehow to Millicent. Buy her a nice slab of tuna or something of the sort. 

In between bites and questions, he smiled across the table at Kylo, who was working his way through a frighteningly large plate of kebabs, and at Rey, who was prodding a charcoal blackened tomato with the prongs of her fork cautiously. The restaurant was relatively empty for a Wednesday evening, and Hux could hear all of the questions and answers easily. 

A question under the category of Oodles of Odes (Hux absolutely despised the person that made the names for the categories) had both him and Ricardo stumped, however. Kylo looked back casually over his shoulder, and, amidst Rey's squeals, asked, "What is Ode on a Grecian Urn?"

When the runner-up, Darla, answered it correctly, Hux was torn between grumbling in frustration and staring at Kylo in awe. He hadn't pegged Kylo for the literary type, but the world was clearly full of surprises. 

He turned his full attention to Kylo, who was smiling lazily across the table at him in a show of what might have been supreme confidence. (If one had asked Kylo, or Rey, or the waiter at their table who had just shown up with a veritable boatload of tzatziki sauce, they might have said that Kylo was smiling quite painfully, baring all his teeth at once in a facsimile of happiness. Rey might not have said facsimile; it was a little advanced for her age.) Hux, on the other hand, felt a small bloom of admiration, and, possibly, adoration, blossoming in his heart, and he warmed quickly towards the other man, though of course he would only admit this to a sleeping Millicent in the dead of that night, after she was already fast asleep on her plush cushion, stuffed full of fatty tuna. 

Hux didn't believe in love, not quite. But he was powerless to stop the tingle of attraction (which he would have claimed was due to the particularly hefty set of pheromones Kylo wafted everywhere at the closest opportunity and would have, in actuality, been due to the over-application of cologne that day) that welled up in him and whispered in his ear that perhaps Kylo Ren might be someone worth spending some time with. Millicent purred in agreement in her sleep. 


	8. Mints

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the hiatus! I've been busy with studying for a graduate school application test :)

Kylo, for his part, had the most horrendous time sleeping that night. He clutched his pillow frantically to his chest as he rolled about on his mattress. The springs all but roared in protest, but fortunately, Rey was sleeping like a log in the next room and was blissfully unaware of her beloved Benny's internal conflict. He could hardly keep himself from going over the play by play of that night's interaction, from meeting him outside of the symposium auditorium to dinner to the Jeopardy answers. Kylo had never before truly appreciated the undergraduate education he'd received until that very moment, and he grinned ecstatically into his pillow, which was starting to shed feathers everywhere under the ardor of its owner's attentions.

He believed the word for it was "infatuated," though he'd have to give his well-worn pocket Merriam Webster dictionary a good perusal in the sobering light of day. Perhaps another term for it, another synonym, might be "charmed." Or "in love." But Kylo fancied himself as something of a dark, misunderstood, mysterious soul, something perhaps inspired by his utter fascination with Beauty and the Beast as a child. He had spent hours poring over that little VCR tape, slotting the video into a screechy recorder whenever he reached the credits. As such, he wasn't sure if he was ready to accept the fact that he might be, well, in love. 

Rey, of course, knew exactly what Benny's predicament was. She'd seen it played out many times on television, on the late late late shows that she sometimes snuck into the living room to watch when Benny was still asleep. But the question of who might wear the white dress and the little tiara was still something that she kept pondering, and as of the date of the symposium, had not been able to answer to her satisfaction. She was hoping Mister Poe at the supermarket might be able to help; he seemed to be quite informed on matters like that.

* * *

 

As it turned out, Poe was all too happy to assume temporary guardianship of Rey while Kylo did his shopping, and he lifted her up to sit on the laminated surface of the counter where she swung her legs gleefully, kicked BB8 in the head a few times, and stuffed lollipops into her mouth with great haste. Her fingers and lips were already a frightening canvas of neon oranges and reds and greens, and BB8 beeped in disapproval. 

Poe, for his part, gleefully ignored the hapless customer who had the misfortune to be in his checkout line at the time, attempting to purchase a package of gum, and instead focused his full attention on Rey and the story she was telling him, complete with several gestures and flecks of multicolored spit spattering BB8's pristine surface in her excitement. 

"And then," she gasped, screwing up her face and trying to remember what had happened next, "Huxy smiled and said he was very imparsed."

"Impressed?" Poe said, beaming from ear to ear. 

"Yeah, that," Rey agreed, stuffing another lollipop into her mouth. Poe was vaguely concerned about her dental care, but figured that mundane things such as his taxpayer dollars would be more than sufficient to cover the array of cavities Rey was currently growing. 

"I see," Poe murmured, more to himself than to anyone else. The disgruntled customer pocketed the package of gum and stormed out the doors, but Poe lifted not a finger to chase after him. There were far more pressing issues at hand. 

"Psst," he stage-whispered to Rey, who peeped up at him. "I've got a little secret to tell you, okay?"

"Shecrets?" Rey asked, her voice loud enough that people in the cereal aisle were wondering exactly what sorts of secrets were about to be revealed. "What shecrets?" 

"The kind that you can't tell your cousin," Poe whispered, grinning madly to himself. His cheeks were starting to hurt from the strain, but he was far from able to contain himself. "Pinky swear?"

After examining Poe's newly manicured hand and deeming his promise acceptable, Rey stuck out a very sticky finger and swore she would not tell Benny a single thing. 

"You know how you know if your cousin likes Hux?" Poe whispered to her. She shook her head no. "He'll buy some gum or some mints or something. You know why?" 

"Why?" Rey asked, gaping up at him. Her teeth were stained a concerning shade of orange, but Poe took no notice. 

"Because he'll want to have nice breath for when he, you know, kisses him," Poe said, matter-of-factly. Finn, who was currently on mop duty by the cupcake display at the front of the store, eyed Poe curiously and wondered exactly how accurate that prediction would be, and if it was applicable in other circumstances as well. 

"Kisses him?" Rey asked, a bit suspiciously. She supposed she had expected something of the sort, but she had thought all of that icky adult stuff on the late late late LATE show was something that came after the big puffy dress and the white cake. Unless, of course, Mister Poe was implying that just such an occasion might be coming up fairly quickly. 

"Indeed," Poe remarked gravely, and Rey had all but forgotten about the half-eaten orange lollipop clutched in her sticky fist. She was on the verge of another question when, much to the dismay of both parties and BB8's joyous delight, Kylo wheeled his cart into the checkout line and began to unload supplies onto the conveyor belt. 

Rey waited with bated breath as she watched items roll past her. Ice cream, Hot Pockets, bagels that looked like pizzas and pizzas that looked like bagels, toothpaste, and then. 

There it was! She crowed with delight as she picked up the packet of Tic-Tacs Kylo had unloaded onto the belt. Mister Poe had been right all along! 

"Those aren't for you," Kylo informed her, trying not to grimace too much as he delicately unstuck her from the counter and tried not to think about how much sugar she had consumed in the eleven minutes he had let her out of his sight. 

"I know!" she shrieked up at him, grinning almost violently, and Kylo, suitably unnerved, paid for his groceries and bustled her out of the store, trying to ignore the equally frightening, full-wattage smile Poe had pasted on his face.

* * *

 

Kylo had been, if he was being frank, quite eager to see Hux again. He had been brushing up on obscure literary facts in the hopes of impressing him once more, but unfortunately for him, the next opportunity for meeting came about as a result of a missed appointment for traffic court and a desperate request for a favor. 

Some months ago, Kylo had received a summons to traffic court in an attempt to scare him into paying a long overdue parking ticket, one which he still maintained was the city's liability. One could get easily confused with all those parking signs littered around the curbs, saying parking was available every day except Tuesday on one block and then claiming that parking on Tuesdays was unacceptable on the next. Kylo, as per usual, had stuffed the summons into a pile of old papers on the kitchen counter and had promptly forgotten about it. That is, until the email marked URGENT pinged into his inbox. 

His mouth went dry as he read over the legalese. There was something about being fined more than his current net worth and suing him for millions, which he clearly did not have. The notice in question had been written by a particularly overzealous aspiring lawyer who desperately wanted to one day join the league of mass tort lawyers littering the country, and was in all fairness rather overstated, but Kylo was not one to know that. 

The date stated on the email was four days from that day, and, in a frenzy, Kylo turned to the only person who he would trust to watch his little cousin and not feed her too much sugar.

* * *

 

"Hello?" Hux asked, more than a little irritably as he cradled his phone between his shoulder and ear. He was currently preoccupied with some rather difficult titrations, and the phenolphthalein indicator was being particularly stubborn that day for whatever reason. "Who is this?" 

"This is, er, Kylo," the tinny voice buzzed in his ear, and Hux actually paused his work for a moment to examine the screen carefully. It was a number not in his contacts, and, granted, he had been planning to ask for it somehow in the very near future, but this was unexpected. 

"How did you get my number?" he blurted out, before he could think of a calm and rational response. "I'm unlisted in the phone books. You know. For tax purposes."

"Sure?" Kylo replied, sounding confused. "I just looked at the university faculty directory."

Hux wanted to slap his forehead in dismay, but his free hand was adorned with a neoprene glove probably coated in all sorts of toxic chemicals. How had he forgotten about the university faculty directory? It had caused his downfall a year previously, when a well-meaning student had wished to bump up her lab grade just the teensiest bit. Bureaucratic nightmares ensued, and Hux had kindly but firmly resigned from TAing the biochemistry lab section. 

"Right," Hux said, trying to regain his composure and failing miserably. He hoped Kylo would chalk it up to work-related stress or something of the sort. "Did you need something?"

"Yeah, er, I was wondering if perhaps you could maybe watch Rey for a few hours," Kylo hedged, his tinny voice sounding even more uncertain over the bad signal. "I have to go to traffic court to settle a ticket or something. On Friday." 

"Friday?" Hux turned the stopcock on the titration and pulled off his other glove, tossing them into a biohazard bin. He ambled to the other side of his bench, squinting at the glossy calendar he kept pinned to the side of the refrigerator where they kept dormant samples. "Friday should be fine," he agreed cautiously. "I do have some work to do, though, so I'll have to keep her in my office if that's not a problem."

"It's not, it's not a problem at all," Kylo hastened. "That would be perfect, and I'll uh, I guess, bring lunch by or something like that." 

"Right then," Hux said. A pause. When it became immediately apparent that Kylo had nothing to add on the matter, he added, "Well, I suppose I'll be seeing you Friday, then."

"Yes!" Kylo said, sounding visibly relieved. "See you Friday."

Hux clicked his phone off and turned back to the titration flask, which was looking miserably more pink by the second. In his distraction and his eagerness to talk to Kylo, he had failed to close the stopcock fully, and the solution was well past the point of being salvageable. With a groan that sent several of his undergraduate student researchers fleeing for the hills (or to the ice room, with transparent excuses about needing to chill samples), Hux tugged on a fresh pair of gloves and disposed of the solution into the chemical waste container, where it sloshed and frothed and seemed to bubble merrily at his apparent ineptitude.

* * *

 

Friday dawned bright and early, not with the cheerful chirping of songbirds outside but with the frighteningly loud squeal of an ambulance racing right underneath his window. Kylo groaned and rolled over, the broken springs in his mattress screaming bloody murder, and found that Rey was already up and ready to go. She had packed a small PowerPuff Girls plastic backpack full of toys and picture books that she insisted she would somehow get Huxy to read to her, and was veritably vibrating with the excitement at the thought of getting to spend a day in a new environment. Or, at least, Kylo hoped she was excited about it. If she wasn't, and if she complained, he just had a feeling that he would never hear the end of it. 

Grumbling about the injustice of traffic court and the frank ludicrousness of parking regulations in general, Kylo bundled her into the car, stuffed a bagel into her mouth to keep her quiet, and drove quickly to the university. Once there, he parked illegally in the shade of two poplars, bundled her out of the car, took a bite of her bagel because she had clearly lost interest, and hustled her off to where Hux was waiting a few hundred yards away, next to the fountain placed in the center of the student quad. 

Hux, for his part, watched with no small amount of amusement as officials from the university's parking and vehicular transport division scurried over to Kylo's clunker and began jotting down statements in their little pocket notebooks. He was on good terms with the departmental head, and would make sure to give him a call before any real harm was done, but he relished the thought of seeing Kylo squirm when he would pluck the little yellow ticket from beneath his windshield wipers. 

Rey stuck her little hand, which was somehow once again sticky, into Hux's and waved a mournful goodbye to Kylo, who frowned down at her and admonished her to be good while he was away. Hux was sure the two of them would have plenty of fun; she could terrorize his lab assistants into actually doing their work for once, she could break some glass all over the floor and finally allow Hux to order fresh beakers and Erlenmeyer flasks without having to go through hordes of paperwork detailing why exactly he needed so many pieces of new equipment when his old ones were still perfectly functional. They would have a grand time, Hux could feel it. 

"Bye-bye, Benny!" she sang gaily to her cousin, who hotfooted it back to his car once he caught sight of what the parking officials were doing. She turned to look up at Hux, and whispered from behind her cupped hand that she had a secret. Hux was feeling in rather a pleasant mood, and allowed her to chatter about this and that all the way back to his tiny office in the science wing. 

"And he bought these!" she pronounced dramatically as Hux herded her into his office, ignoring the amused looks and googly eyes his colleagues were giving him. When he turned to Rey to inspect what exactly Kylo had bought, he found a small plastic package of Tic Tacs in her upturned palm. Spearmint. "You wanna know why?" 

He had placed her on a spare folding chair he had lying around, and he could see the plastic and weak metal struts all but straining at the seams as she bounced up and down in her excitement. He dearly hoped she would be able to channel some of that spare excitement into the vigorous breaking of glassware that he had planned for that day. 

"Why?" he asked, smiling in amusement as he keyed his desktop on and proceeded to ignore all of the frantic emails students in his lab group had taken it upon themselves to write. They would, in fact, be summarily ignored until well after he had eaten breakfast and allowed Rey to destroy half the equipment. 

"Because he wants to kiss you!" she shrieked, and then instantly fell quiet as she looked up at him with wide eyes. The Tic Tacs were clutched tightly in her fist. Hux too was silent, trying to absorb this new information and failing. 

"And who told you that?" he asked, trying vigorously to stave off a blush. He admitted the thought had, perhaps, crossed his mind more than once, but to hear that Kylo might reciprocate the idea! Well. That was something else entirely. "Did your cousin tell you that?"

"Mister Poe at the grocery store," she announced brightly, her attention now focused on trying to open the box of Tic Tacs. Hux reached over and absentmindedly popped it open for her, taking one for himself. The cool biting flavor of mint filled his mouth. "He told me." 

"Right." Hux was unsure how exactly Poe at the grocery store knew all this about Kylo; Kylo hardly seemed like the type to go swooning all over town about his romantic endeavors. Not, however, that Hux was complaining. Far from it. 

He was a student of the sciences, and his current hypothesis had now changed. He would do his best to implement controls and experimental procedure to manipulate the encounter that he now felt sure was on the horizon. In fact, Hux was in such a good mood that he proceeded to open one email, something inane about a mismarked test, and responded with full confidences that he would have the test regraded by the end of the morning. 

It was an unusual action, but it was an unusual day, and Hux was feeling more than a little generous. 


	9. Glassware

Kylo plopped himself down in one of the sticky metal folding chairs outside the courtroom where his entire life would, he had no doubt, be put on display for the judge to pick through. He'd probably be questioned about that one detention he'd gotten in the second grade for throwing crayons at another little boy who had the smuggest smirk Kylo had ever seen (with possibly the exception of Hux's). The offense he had committed, in this particular case, was apparently parking in a handicapped spot. The defense he had to offer was that 1) it had been late at night, and 2) he had heard reports that some hooligans went around pasting false information on the parking signs. It was false, of course, but Kylo was banking on the judge being some old coot who probably hadn't seen a legal textbook since 1934, and who also had not driven down that particular set of streets since the first Model T Ford had rolled hot off the assembly line. 

His name was called, and he nearly choked on the burnt coffee some well-meaning paralegal had probably made late last night. "Benjamin Organa Solo!" the bailiff yelled into the hallway, as though Kylo might be hard of hearing. God, how he hated that name! It sounded so...so nice. Much too open and friendly, like maybe he would sit down with his father some night and pull out an investment portfolio and discuss returns and dividends in a calm manner that he had not possessed since the age of eight. 

He also hadn't seen Han in a very long time. Had, in fact, no real evidence that his father was still kicking around the face of the planet, save for the little odd souvenirs that came in the post for his mother every now and then. 

Shrunken heads from Tahiti. A miniature wax figurine from Madame Tussauds that Kylo had trouble discerning between George Washington and Hikaru Sulu. An entire crate of Vegemite from Australia. One had learned not to ask any questions regarding Han Solo and his spontaneous gift-giving. 

He shambled into the courtroom, his hands stuffed deep in his pockets, a grimace written all over his face at the injustice of it all. He sorely hoped that Rey wasn't giving Hux too hard of a time; he hated to admit it to himself, but he was growing more and more fond of him as the time went on. There was just something about him, all well put together and downright adorable in that little argyle sweater vest he had on today, and Kylo could have waxed poetic on it for pages and pages except the judge was banging her gavel on the table and glaring at him as though she already held him contempt. 

"Er, yes?" he blurted out, unable to disguise the fact that he hadn't been paying attention. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I'm a bit slow this morning."

"Evidently," she replied, her tone heavy with distaste as though she had seen into Kylo's deepest fantasies and found them quite disturbing. Kylo, personally, didn't consider them particularly devious. Fan websites for popular media characters had fantasies much more graphic than anything he could conjure up. "As I was saying, it reads in your case report that you are contesting a parking ticket for illegal parking on Acorn and Wilshire. Can you confirm this, for the record?"

The stenographer snored loudly in the corner. Kylo was unsure what, if any, records were being taken of the trial. 

"Yes, that is correct," he replied instead, when the Honorable Judge Martinet looked as though she were about two seconds from flinging her gavel directly at his head. "I would like to contest that parking ticket." 

"Right, then." She frowned solemnly down at him, as if to say that the inability to comply with parking rules and regulations were a grave shortcoming. She flipped through a frighteningly thick set of papers, ruffling many of them at an alarming rate, and Kylo slumped into the seat at the defendant's table, wondering if the ruling or death would come first. At the rate things were proceeding (they were now attempting to wake up the stenographer, who was, of course, sleeping the sleep of the just), it was beginning to look like death might just come first. He thumbed at his phone in his jacket pocket, wondering if he might have a moment to text Hux before his untimely demise. 

Quick! Judge Martinet was looking the other way, no doubt frowning at some deviant high school teenager sitting waiting for his penance. Kylo grabbed at his phone, unlocked it quickly, and took a selfie which he didn't bother to check. He gave it the quick caption of "Missing you already!" which he figured he could either pass off as telling Hux to tell it to Rey (a blatant lie, mind you; traffic court was only slightly more stimulating than reading Green Eggs and Ham to his cousin), or could pass off perhaps as something ironic. Something witty. Something with a twist. 

Before he could chicken out, he hit the send button, listening to the small whooshing sound his phone made to indicate a message had been sent. He gnawed on his lip and fervently hoped that...well, that something might come about. What exactly that was, he wasn't sure yet, but he was sure that, whatever it was, it would be much better than whatever punishment for illegal parking he had yet to receive.

* * *

 

Hux's phone chimed, and his smile only grew wider when he saw who it was. 

"Who is it?" Rey demanded, but she was getting a little tired. Hux couldn't blame her. She had done quite well with the glassware, and he had heard a few of his undergraduate research assistants complaining that their backs hurt from kneeling on the tile floors to sweep up the vast quantities of broken glass. 

"It's your cousin," he informed her, grinning as he swiped open his phone. "Look! He sent us a picture!"

Rey blinked at the phone screen for a moment before yawning widely and flopping dramatically onto the small couch in Hux's office that he used for just such purposes. "Is Benny having a good time?" she mumbled inquisitively, but Hux could already tell that she was drifting off towards a midmorning nap. She was snoring before he could even respond. 

Missing you already, huh? Hux thought to himself, with no small amount of blushing. He could feel even the roots of his hair growing hot, and was glad he had taken the precaution of locking his office door before opening the text. Having been annoyingly celibate for what felt like the better part of a century, Hux was unsure how he might react to anything even remotely saucier, and he wondered if he would have to ask Kylo to tone it down a notch just for his own sanity. 

No, he decided, gripping his phone tighter in his hand and admiring the beauty marks that adorned Kylo's neck. He liked being driven to the brink of insanity, was probably why he'd taken on the research position. He had very soft eyes, and hair that looked even softer. Maybe he used Pantene. Hux's mouth watered at the thought. 

He tilted the phone at an angle so that the light it captured would be flattering on his face, and made sure to get Rey's tiny face, pressed into the couch cushions, in the background. "We miss you too," he captioned it, smiling fondly at the screen before sending the message in. 

A knock came at the door. Rey stirred on the couch. 

Hux yanked open the door and glared the student outside into cowering submission. "I'm a bit preoccupied at the moment," he hissed, although if one were to look at his desktop screen one would see nothing except a live video feed of the nanny cam he had installed surreptitiously in his apartment so he could watch Millicent during the day. She was rapidly unraveling an awfully ugly sweater he had received one year at the biology department's winter social. A truly horrific event, if he recalled correctly, and not one that he looked forward to at the end of every year. "What do you need?" 

The student all but dropped the papers he was holding in abject fear, scurrying off into the distance. Hux heard the door to the laboratory slam closed, and he smiled proudly. Rey was still fast asleep, he noted as he pulled the door to his personal office firmly closed, and showed no signs of waking up any time soon. 

He hummed to himself, pointedly not looking at his phone to draw the eagerness and anticipation out even further, and pulled up some requisition forms on his laptop to order some new glassware. It was turning out to be a brilliant Friday, and Hux could hardly wait for Kylo to come back so he could put his little social experiment, sample size of one, into action. 


	10. Carryout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remember for my public speaking class I once performed a monologue from 500 Days of Summer

Kylo's lawyer, for all his bluster and good intentions about trying to get Kylo out of the ticket, turned to be one of those people whose personalities quivered in the presence of authority figures. All Judge Martinet had to do was look at Kylo's lawyer just barely over the bridge of her nose, and Kylo's lawyer melted like a snow cone in the dead heat of summer, hastily gathering up his papers, stuffing them into his ratty briefcase, and assuring the judge that Kylo would most definitely pay the ticket in full well before the deadline. For good measure, he elbowed Kylo in the ribs - quite hard - and gratuitously interpreted his responding yelp as an agreement to his legal concourse. 

Kylo was not in the least bit pleased, and was in fact wondering if it were in any way, shape, or form, possible to countersue one's own lawyer. Surely lawsuits had gone to trial over less, he thought to himself, and he was about to open his mouth to protest the fact that his counsel had apparently defected to the other side when he felt the buzz of his phone in his pocket. 

Saving his biting remarks for later, when he was well and truly in a right state of irritation, Kylo dragged himself out of the courtroom and dug into his pocket for his phone. As expected, the instant they stepped foot outside the courtroom, the lawyer made a quick getaway, so fast that Kylo half-expected there to be some cartoonish smoke effect on his heels. 

The message he had received from Hux erased all previous thoughts of disemboweling the lawyer and serving his probably equally well-meaning mother his jellied intestines for Thanksgiving. "We miss you, too!" it proclaimed in twelve-point Arial on the glowing screen, pasted over a picture of Rey fast asleep and already slobbering all over a small couch in Hux's office. Hux, for his part, looked positively gorgeous, if Kylo was mincing words. He felt sure he could rhapsodize on Hux's photogenic nature for a dissertation, if required. 

The light had caught him in just the right way, sunlight threading through his rosy hair like golden fingers, sparkling in his eyes. His mouth quirked up at the corners in a way that made Kylo's lips tingle, pucker in the expectation of a kiss soon to be had. Freckles spattered across the bridge of his nose and the planes of his cheeks like uncharted constellations. One got the idea. Kylo quickly saved the picture before it could disappear, trotting out obediently into the late morning sun and promptly forgetting all about his lawyer's ineptitude. Hux tended to have that effect on people. Or perhaps just on Kylo. Kylo tended to be a bit more observant about these things, being an aspiring writer of sorts, after all. 

It was nearly lunchtime, and he was sure Hux would be hungry. (In Rey's case, positively famished - she'd hear the rustle of a plastic carryout bag, and would be hounding Hux and pawing at his office door frantically like one of Pavlov's dogs gone absolutely bonkers. Kylo could see it all already. Nothing would be spared. Shreds of paper napkins would go flying through the air to coat all the desks and lab benches with confetti. Sweet and sour sauce would splatter all over the calendars and computer monitors. The lab assistants and undergraduates would coo in Rey's general direction, proclaiming how cute she was, fooled by the eye of the hurricane.) 

Well, Kylo sighed to himself, he had promised to bring lunch by, after all. It would only be the polite thing to do, considering how he'd let his cousin terrorize his love interest - wait, love interest? - for the better half of the morning. The day wasn't too hot, wasn't too cold, and Kylo plodded off along the cracked sidewalk bordering the courthouse, staring at the gum-smeared concrete, his hands jammed deep into his pockets, and wondered about where that sudden terminology had come from. Which part in his subconscious had determined that? he asked himself sternly, a frown settling on his face. And, more importantly, was it true? 

He thought so long and hard about it that he nearly missed the entrance to the Chinese carryout he and Rey favored, where he had a running tab. The answer was still undetermined as he pulled open the smudged glass door and stepped into the dimly lit foyer of a restaurant that might have seen better days or might have been run by people who no longer particularly cared about getting top ratings in Zagat. Though the place was all but empty, the air was still redolent with the scents of thick grease and spices, curry noodles and soy sauce. 

Kylo ordered an assortment of food, absentmindedly, only adding a vegetable dish after thinking for half a second that Hux might think him a savage if he didn't, then promptly wondering why he'd ordered something he wouldn't eat. The perky waitress had all but fled the scene after the last item had left his mouth, though, and she was nowhere to be found. All that remained to do was wait, then, and Kylo focused his thoughts on this new development with Hux as he plopped himself into a sticky metal folding chair by the door. He twiddled his thumbs, counted the number of smudged linoleum tiles on the floor, pondered the effects of MSG. 

He was interested in Hux. Yes. That was putting it mildly, perhaps. 

He liked Hux. Also yes. This, despite the fact that Hux was one of those people that used recyclable grocery bags, people whose ideology Kylo generally opposed. 

He loved Hux. Huh. He'd have to think about that, carefully. And what kind of love was it? Was it the kind of love that spanned centuries, like Tristan and Isolde? (Hux would be Isolde.) Was it a crush and infatuation, a la 500 Days of Summer? Was it completely misguided? 

Kylo wasn't quite sure he was ready for the L word, quite yet. But that was no problem. There were currently more pressing matters to attend to, such as the bulging bags of takeout that had suddenly materialized in front of him, and Kylo took the plastic handles firmly in hand and trundled out the door.

* * *

 

Rey was still sleeping when a research associate rapped smartly on Hux's door and nearly had his head bitten off for his efforts. 

"Uh, a M-Mr. Kylo Ren is h-h-here to see you, sir," the associate whimpered in the face of Hux's wrath, ire that evaporated almost instantly at the mention of Kylo's name. "He b-b-b-brought food, isn't that a v-v-violation of lab policy?" 

"I'll show you what a violation of lab policy is," Hux snapped at him, and the associate ran of fleeing into the depths of the lab. His research for the day would be thoroughly ruined, and the supporting documentation in his associated lab notebook would only reveal that the bacteria he was studying were perhaps under some sort of emotional duress from unidentified environmental factors. This triflingly false detail would, in turn, eventually lead to a series of projects discussing the humanity of Roseobacter and whether or not it was ethical to utilize bacteria's rapid generation times to produce synthetic polymers. (It was eventually agreed that it wasn't. But that is a story for another time.)

Hux was bright and cheery when Kylo finally bumbled into his office, the bags of takeout dangling heavily from his hands. He set them on Hux's desk, on top of a few undergraduates' resumes that were becoming more spotted with grease and oil by the minute. Rey was snoring like a chainsaw, and the door was closed behind him, and the sun was shining brightly and lighting up Kylo's face like something out of a romance movie, and, really, Hux was just burning with curiosity, eager to test his hypothesis. 

"So," he began, bluntly, gnawing at the swell of his lower lip as though scrambling for words, though he'd practiced them for what felt like a million years already. "Rey told me something interesting." 

"Oh, God," Kylo muttered, slapping his hand over his forehead like someone in a soap opera. Hux fought back the urge to laugh. "This is the part where you say you never want to see me again, because I put spaghetti on ketchup and always ask for paper bags at the supermarket or some other crock, isn't it?" 

Hux gawked at him. That certainly hadn't been what he'd been expecting. Admittedly, the whole ketchup on spaghetti thing threw him for a loop. Stole the words right out of his mouth. All thoughts of his potential social experiment were flung out the window. How barbaric, the stickler side of his personality sneered. How rustic! How positively domestic! shrieked the more forgiving part. He was, at that moment, uncharacteristically lost for words. He hadn't felt this way since his participation in his elementary school spelling bee, and he'd forgotten how to spell macaroni. His father had been gravely disappointed when he'd inserted a superfluous E in there in a moment of blinding panic. 

"Uh," he began, staring blankly at Kylo, his mouth on frightening standby while his mind struggled to compensate for the tremendous shock he'd just received. "I'll see you again," he finally managed, almost stupidly, parroting Kylo's words back at him. "In fact, I'd like to see more of you." 

It was Kylo's turn to gawk at him, and Hux's turn to slap his hand to his forehead in dismay. Never in all his years had he thought he'd ever proposition someone with a sleeping chainsaw only two feet away; never in all his years had he thought he'd ever proposition someone like Kylo Ren with such horrendous innuendo. If Kylo had dared to use that line on him, Hux thought bitterly to himself, he'd have run for the hills. It sounded like something off a terribly written Tinder profile of a university freshman who had faked his age and jotted down some cliched hobbies, like drinking copious amounts of hard liquor and bringing his weed to the club to smoke it there for some undefined reason. Hux was disappointed in himself. 

Fortunately, Kylo did not share that sentiment. More fortunately, he didn't burst out into a laughing fit outright. Hux appreciated that. We all had our moments of weakness and human error, after all. 

"I, um. Hm." Kylo frowned at the spotless tiles, scuffing the toe of one absolutely filthy sneaker against the gleam. If Hux had been a lesser man, he would have shrieked at the smudge it left behind on the glossy surface, and would have shooed Kylo out in disgrace into the hallway. But Hux prided himself on the fortitude of his mental constitution, though it took a tremendous amount of effort to restrain himself from commenting. "I would. Ah. Like to see more of you, too. Um. In all the ways that implies. If you'd like that." Kylo peeked up at him hopefully after this admission, and , once again, if Hux had been a lesser man, he would have squealed with delight. As it was, he only offered a simple smile, one that betrayed nothing of the way his heart was pounding a fierce tattoo against the inside of his rib cage, one that didn't indicate how a whole colony of butterflies had settled into his stomach. 

"I would like that, a lot," Hux blurted out, finesse thrown to the wind. It was worth it, though, for the way Kylo's eyes creased at the corners when he smiled in obvious relief, the way his full lips quirked up at the corners. 

He had dimples, Hux noted absentmindedly, and they were growing larger by the millisecond as Kylo's smile deepened. Before he could fully comprehend what he was doing, his hands had reached forward to fist themselves in the front of Kylo's plaid shirt, one that the rational part of his mind yelled probably hadn't helped Kylo's court decision in the slightest, he was going to kiss a delinquent, did he fully understand the ramifications of that?! and additionally - 

Hux shushed it abruptly, tugging Kylo down for a kiss that was nearly as clumsy as it was sweet. Kylo tasted faintly like toothpaste, like honey and cinnamon, his large hands coming up to cup the sides of Hux's face hesitantly, and Hux swore he heard angels start to sing. (In fact, it was just the sound of sirens rushing onto the quad outside his office window, presumably in order to contain an abrupt protest that had broken out over the intensity of the midterm written by a certain professor.) 

The moment was perfect. Hux had never quite subscribed to the whole set of tropes perpetuated by romantic comedies of the new century, but this was certainly worthy of those. Very 500 Days of Summer-esque. Kylo nibbled lightly at the swell of his lower lip, and Hux's lips parted of their own accord, letting Kylo lick into his mouth. It was rather saucy, as things were, and Hux's fingers tightened in the plaid to ground himself. 

The chainsaw noises had stopped. Neither of the two noticed. But Rey was sitting up on the couch now, nudged awake by the smell of food and further interested by the spectacle unfolding before her very eyes. Poe would grill her on the juicy details later, slapping lollipops and pilfered king-size candy bars into her hands as bribery. Rey committed every detail to memory, like the way one of Benny's hands reached around to press against Huxy's back and the way Huxy's face and neck turned all red like a strawberry. She carefully eyed the packet of Tic Tacs on Huxy's desk. It looked like it had remained untouched since she and Huxy had opened it some time earlier. 

She squirreled away that detail for later, too. It looked like Mister Poe at the grocery had been wrong about something for once, after all!

She only spoke up when it became immediately apparent that Huxy and Benny were not interested in the food getting cold on the desk. When she even so much as opened her mouth to let out a small peep of consternation, the two of them jumped apart, whipped around guiltily as though their mouths and hands hadn't just been all over each other, and Huxy quickly began to ladle out a small mountain of fried rice and beef and broccoli onto a paper plate for her. She poked at the little trees with her plastic fork, and Benny didn't even scold her for not eating her vegetables. Rey shoveled the food into her mouth with gusto, sizing up Benny and Huxy eagerly with gleaming eyes, and wondered exactly how much candy she could extract from Mister Poe at the next supermarket run. 

At the rate the two of them were going, with sheepish smiles and red faces, Rey figured she'd have enough lollipops to last her until her next birthday. 


	11. Coupons

Poe had no sooner craned his neck over the new display of candy bars that Finn had just stocked this morning when he saw a very rumpled-looking, very bulky looking Kylo Ren pushing the cart with the wonky wheel past the automatic sliding doors. Rey was looking adorably disheveled herself, her light brown hair tugged up in some odd facsimile of a pigtail on the top of her head. Kylo clearly had no experience with hair other than his own, and as a result, Rey looked like a very pink pineapple. She had clearly dressed herself that day. 

And then. 

And _then_. 

Much to Poe's surprise, and unfathomable delight, a slightly messy Hux trailed some distance behind them, looking perhaps a bit sheepish and looking every inch like the guilty teenage boy climbing out his sheltered girlfriend's bedroom window in the middle of the night. There was some odd glow about him, too, and with a start, Poe realized it was perhaps one of the only times he'd seen the man look genuinely happy. His plaid shirt was untucked, one half of his collar not as sharply creased as the other, and - he could hardly believe his eyes - it looked like the shadow of stubble on his jaw. The Hux he knew would never leave his apartment looking anything less than immaculate, and, using his advanced powers of intuition, he deduced that Hux had, quite possibly, spent the night away from home. And, quite possibly, that place might have happened to be Kylo's. 

He cackled to himself, silently, as Kylo plopped Rey down on his counter and left her in his charge while he went about his shopping. After what looked like a moment of deliberation, and a longing glance towards where the organic fruits and vegetables he favored were kept, Hux tagged along behind the squealing of Kylo's cart. Poe gleefully rubbed his hands together as he stuffed a chocolate into Rey's fist and plotted to pull the CCTV tapes from this morning later for intense perusal accompanied with a tub of microwave popcorn. Butter flavor. Maybe caramel, if he was feeling naughty. Perhaps he could convince Finn from dairy to join him? 

"Details," he demanded, looking Rey squarely in the eye. "It looks like your cousin and Hux - er, Mr. Huxy - are getting along quite well. Do you know anything about it?" 

Rey eyed him for a moment. Held out one little palm, already smeared with chocolate. 

"Ah, you want more!" he deduced. He would pilfer the entire display of chocolates if he had to. He had all day. Poe reached into his pocket for his wallet; BB8 beeped disapprovingly up at him, probably telling him that he was condoning the healthy festering of cavities in Rey's tiny mouth. But perhaps BB8 was mellowing a bit in his old age, maybe it was the influence of Miss Vesuvius in the in-store cafe. "A fine negotiator you'll make," he continued, slapping a few dollars from his wallet into the till and shoving another chocolate into Rey's grasping hands. "You could probably work with some government department. CIA, FBI. TSA, maybe, if you're particularly good at searching." 

"Huxy and Benny kissed!" Rey announced proudly through a mouthful of chocolate. "In Huxy's office. And then we had food." 

"Right, right," Poe mumbled, all but stuffing another sweet into Rey's sticky mouth as he scrabbled for more details. "What was it like? Was there tongue? Did Huxy blush? Who started it? I want to know everything."

She eyed him shrewdly. Stuck out her hand again and demanded more chocolates. 

From somewhere behind the display of chocolates, Finn stifled a chuckle into the curve of his hand as he listened to Poe grilling the little girl for more details. Poe was so adorable, really, when he got all passionate about something. Just the other day Finn had seen him wandering around the ice cream section, meticulously rearranging the pints and gallons and quarts into their respective flavors. Finn, who had been on frozen duty that day, heartily approved, and they had worked together. Their hands brushed every so often. Finn had cherished every moment, and had stolen glimpses at Poe every once in a while, when he was sure the other man wasn't looking. 

He had been looking, in fact. Poe was all but infatuated, and Finn was slowly but surely falling victim to the charm of the rumpled-looking cashier.

* * *

 

Hux followed Kylo around the store aimlessly, looking with dismay at the items Kylo was tossing haphazardly into his cart without any semblance of order. Kylo had invited him to lunch that day at his apartment, and despite his foreboding, given his previous visit, Hux wondered if perhaps he might be willing to view the abode in a more forgiving light. Given their recent experiences, and given the fact that they had somehow fallen asleep in the lab building's lounge area after scarfing down some leftovers from a department meeting that had been left unattended in a conference room. Rey's idea, of course, but Kylo and Hux were both guilty of being enablers, and Hux hadn't felt up to protesting that the food was for other people when he felt sure he would need some sort of leverage against Rey later. 

He hadn't even been able to finish the research he had set out to do, nor grade the papers he'd set out to grade, that day, all too aware of Kylo's hulking presence humming somewhere behind his left elbow. The pipetting and titrations had taken much longer than normal because of the butterflies in his stomach, and, before he knew it, the last undergraduate had walked out the lab door, sauntering off in search of some happy hour at a bar that didn't card. 

And then they had been alone. 

Well, with Rey, of course, but she had conked out nearly as soon as she'd finished gobbling down some cocktail franks and a hefty plate of pasta salad. Hux would have liked to say that one thing led to another, but, surprise surprise! he hadn't thought that the laboratory lounge atmosphere, coupled with the ambience of Rey's snoring and the presence of CCTV cameras in the ceilings were conducive to a romantic environment. He had returned to the laboratory itself to finish up some trials, and when he reentered the lounge, Kylo himself had fallen fast asleep. Hux took it upon himself to sit down next to him, and the cushions were particularly soft, and Hux was feeling rather tired with all the ado that had happened that day, and, well. That had been that. 

They had woken up this morning bleary-eyed and stubble-cheeked, only to find that Rey had already badgered some poor early researcher into giving her a muffin. 

"Do you even know what a vegetable is?" Hux asked Kylo now, quirking an eyebrow as Kylo tossed in a few TV dinners, and then, contemplating the freezer, tossed in a few more. "Have you seen one in the past decade?"

"Oh, don't be a nag," Kylo mumbled nonchalantly, flapping his hand at Hux. Hux was sure Kylo's sodium levels were through the roof. "I'm perfectly healthy. In tip top shape. Brimming with testosterone."

Hux wrinkled his nose at this statement, but said nothing further. Kylo was a rather stacked individual, for lack of a better word, and Hux was, well, not really. 

A thought brightened in his mind, however, as he trailed behind Kylo and watched him plow through the freezer section. "Why don't I help make lunch?" he offered, trying to make it sound as though the idea had just occurred to him, and not spawned itself the instant he saw Kylo reaching for the Hungry Mans. "I can make some nice, tasty salads to go with the...the whatever you're making."

Kylo grunted something back over his shoulder, and Hux took that as an affirmative. Once Kylo had finished stocking his cart with enough packaged meals to feed a small country, Hux took the edge of the cart firmly in hand and steered them towards the produce section. Butterflies flapped lightly in his stomach, pleased by this turn of events; they were already acting like an established couple! He calmed them gently as he walked through the piles of fruit and veg, pulling out a bag of spring greens and some juicy red tomatoes. Surely Kylo and Rey couldn't possibly hate tomatoes, he thought to himself as he double bagged them in thin plastic. Those, with a nice vinaigrette and some lemon. They'd hardly be able to resist it! They'd be begging Hux for more. 

Oh. That thought had been poorly worded. Hux could hardly keep from blushing, his emotions already on edge with the object of his affections in his grasp. 

"Having dirty thoughts over the cucumbers, are we?" Kylo snorted from somewhere behind him, and Hux's blush dissipated as he turned to glare at Kylo, who only had the sort of lazy, languid smile on his face of someone too handsome for their own good, of someone who knew they could get away with murder. 

"Takes one to know one," he shot back coolly, savoring Kylo's flustered sputters for a moment before turning back to select a few yellow onions.

* * *

 

"And then? And then??" Poe demanded, his nose about an inch from Rey's as he continued his spirited interrogation. Rey was giggling; his eyelashes were tickling her forehead. "What happened next?" He was thoroughly absorbed in this story, and from the sounds of the squealing wheel coming ever closer, knew he would have to draw it to a close soon. 

"And then..." Rey held her breath dramatically, cackling as Poe's eyes nearly threatened to bulge out of his head with impatience and anticipation. "And then I fell asleep." 

Poe wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. It was like having a cliffhanger on your favorite TV show, or discovering that the character you particularly liked in your dating sim app of choice was unavailable until you did such and such a quest and reached such and such a level. It was absolutely infuriating, but he could hardly blame Rey. 

Finn nearly shredded the inside of his cheek with his teeth, trying not to laugh. If things went as he imagined they might, he would definitely have to introduce Poe to his little cousin Gabriella. They would absolutely adore each other, and Finn was himself becoming more and more infatuated by the minute. What wasn't to like? Great smile, deep dimples, wavy hair, great with kids...Finn would bet the entirety of his student loans that he could easily spend an entire shift or two waxing poetic about Poe Dameron, Cashier Extraordinaire. 

Unfortunately, Poe's interrogation was cut abruptly short by the entrance of Hux and Kylo, stage left. They were already bickering like an old married couple, and Poe could have swooned, probably would have had BB8 not prodded him viciously in the knee and reminded him of his duties. 

"Benny! Huxy!" Rey squealed, reaching out for the two of them with sticky, chocolate smeared hands. "I missed you!"

Poe's heart melted, absolutely dissolved like a popsicle on a hot summer day. His heart immediately refroze, almost instantly, as his eyes trailed up to meet Hux's steely gaze. That was the look of a man who had every intention of disemboweling Poe at the slightest misstep, and Poe's words dried up in his throat. His numb hands scanned the items across the counter, and BB8, perhaps grateful for the silence for once, bagged them with frightening efficiency. 

"You will speak of this to no one," Hux growled, or at least, that's what Poe thought he had said. Rather, Hux had inquired politely about using a coupon. At that point, Poe would have scanned the entire coupon book if it meant he could get away from that frightening gaze even a minute sooner. 

He all but tossed the scarf of receipt at them before cowering behind the counter in abject fear. Their footsteps and the squeaky wheel receded into the distance, and he - and the store - were safe from the pillaging. For now. 

"That was fast," Finn called over from baked goods. Poe dared a glance over the counter. Finn was grinning at him, leaning on a broom and helping himself idly to a packet of cookies he had bought earlier on his break. Poe distinctly remembered swiping him through his line. Their hands had brushed, and Poe's heart had fluttered. "Want a cookie?" 

"Do I ever," Poe declared, but not before tossing a hasty glance over his shoulder to make sure that Kylo and Hux were well and truly gone. (They weren't; rather, they were bickering in the parking lot over the proper way to utilize the trunk space in Kylo's grubby car.) "What do you mean, that was fast?" he asked, reaching out to take a cookie. Not even the taste of too-sweet artificial frosting could deter him. "I am the model of efficiency."

"Right," Finn agreed, his grin growing wider. "I'm sure you are." 

Sunbeams shot in through the windows, rainbows and butterflies miraculously appeared in the skies. Poe's recent trying ordeal was quickly forgotten as he busied himself batting his eyelashes at Finn. Bat, bat, bat. That was sure to do wonders for their relationship points. If Poe was feeling like being modest - and he wasn't -, Kylo and Hux could certainly use a few pointers in the fine art of flirtation. And, of course, Poe was just the man to teach them. Once he had batted his eyelashes sufficiently, and left Finn looking rather seduced, he flitted back over to his station and began to promptly ignore the queue that had grown in his absence in favor of setting about making lesson plans.


	12. Cleaning Supplies

Much to Hux's surprise, Kylo unearthed a parcel wrapped in butcher paper and twine from somewhere beneath the pile of Hungry Mans. 

"Steak," Kylo explained, when Hux continued to stare at him, dumbstruck. "What, did you think I was going to serve you lunch a la Lean Cuisine?" 

Hux was positively gobsmacked, only managed to close his mouth in time to avoid a swarm of fruit flies that were apparently quite attracted by the brand of toothpaste he had just switched to. "Well," he started, then paused, unsure of what to say. "Well, I, I'm really not quite too sure what I expected, to be quite frank." A cockroach skittered out from a crack in the wall that certainly hadn't been there the last time Hux visited. The rose-colored glasses were slipping quickly off, or perhaps Hux had just been given the wrong prescription on his initial visit to the optometrist's. 

"We are dating, after all," Kylo stated, turning away to presumably fire up the stove. From his vantage point, Hux could see the tips of his ears turning red, and he had to curl his hands into tight fists to keep from breaking out into a horrifyingly sappy grin. "Or something like that."

"Something like that," Hux agreed amicably, after a few long seconds during which he made an attempt to steady his voice. "I hardly think someone like you could be contained with conventional labels." 

Kylo flashed a shy smile at him before turning back to his all-consuming task of buttering a skillet pan rather vigorously. Hux rather admired the way Kylo had rolled back his sleeves, buttoning them past his elbows. He had rather nice forearms. Hux was always very appreciative of good forearms. 

"Shall I make the salads, then?" he inquired, already beginning to pull the vegetables out of their plastic bags. Kylo almost visibly shuddered at the word, but swallowed roughly and agreed. Rey screamed from the couch that she definitely did not want a salad, but Hux trilled to her that she would definitely be having one. He would make it with extra croutons, if she liked, but he would stand there and make sure she at least choked down some carrots and lettuce leaves, or his name wasn't Brendol Hux the Second.

"The second, huh?" Kylo shouted over the roar of meat sizzling in the pan. Grease splattered against the backboard, and Hux feared for the real estate prices around the place. "Not too much originality in the family, then?"

Hux shrugged, chopping the tomatoes, washing the lettuce, and dicing the cucumber with the grace and finesse of someone who has spent far too much time watching Chopped. "Not much," he agreed. "Mums wanted to name me Richard, or Christopher. Something classic like that. But my father was not having it, no sir." 

Kylo was apparently more perceptive than Hux had previously banked on, for he perked up right away at the slight strain of irritation that had crept into Hux's voice when he'd mentioned his father. "Not on good terms with the old man then, I take it?" 

"Indeed, that is correct," Hux agreed, a tic of irritation pulsing in his forehead. 

A silence fell between them. 

"I'm not quite on good terms with dear old dad, myself," Kylo ventured, shyly. "Or, rather, any terms, I guess. I don't see him much."

"Probably for the better," Hux pointed out, now juicing lemons quite ferociously; he was rather fortunate that he had no paper cuts. "Fathers can be a bit mad, sometimes. Though, ah, Kylo?" 

Kylo was so focused on the steaks and what appeared to be the burning of them that Hux had to repeat himself. He cleared his throat. "Ahem. Kylo?" 

"Yes?" Kylo glanced up at him, curls of dark hair falling into his eyes. Hux reached over automatically to brush them aside. The gesture was almost fond, and Hux wondered exactly where he'd picked it up. 

"Perhaps this is a discussion to save for a later time," Hux ventured, pulling back his hand and wondering if Kylo always ran that warm, or if it was just the heat from the stove and the flying spray of butter. Kylo looked a bit crestfallen, and Hux hastened to amend his statement. "I usually save the father issues for the third date. At least. You know. Slip it in there after entree but before the cheese course."  
The corners of Kylo's eyes crinkled as he smiled, and leaned over to peck Hux on the cheek. 

It would all have been positively romantic, something taken straight out of a 1950s romcom, had the wonky fire alarm not started blaring its siren song and piercing Hux's eardrums quite effectively.

* * *

 

After Kylo had frantically fanned away at the smoke detector for a good three minutes, the alarm finally stopped and Hux knew peace once again. Peace, coupled with the undeniably leathery smell of burnt steak.

"Don't try to pass those off as extra well done," Hux advised Kylo, who hung his head in shame. He prodded around the slabs of meat with a wooden skewer, uncertainly. Upon closer inspection, not all parts of the steak were unsalvageable. Small blessings. 

"Well," Hux sighed, moving the pan deftly away from the heat and staring blankly at the oil splatter left behind in its wake. "We could have a steak salad, there should be enough of it left for three."

Rey roared once again that she would not eat a salad. Hux ignored her. 

"If you really wanted," he hedged, "we could go back to the store. You could go back to the store. Buy more meat." 

"No, absolutely not," Kylo shot back, adamantly. One encounter with Poe Dameron, the Cashier from Hell, was more than enough for the day, and he definitely didn't need to provide more fodder for the illicit gossip mill Dameron was certainly running his mouth off to anyone and everyone within a fifty-mile radius. He wouldn't be surprised if somehow news of their new relationship spread to the next county. "We'll...we'll eat the salad." 

Hux wanted to punch the air in victory. Such sweeter words had never been spoken. 

Admittedly, Rey was a little suspicious of why her plate contained so much green, but she cautiously followed Benny's example and scrunched her face up while chewing. Hux relished every second. 

"It wasn't that bad," Kylo gritted out between his teeth forty minutes later, standing at the kitchen sink and dutifully wiping down the dishes that Hux washed. Most of the dishes were stained with some sort of orange streaks that Hux suspected had been old pizza grease baked onto the ceramic, and he had been half tempted to throw the lot out, but then he thought about he and Kylo telling stories to their grandkittens about how life had been like when they'd first fallen in love. 

Thoroughly sentimental crock that he was downright ashamed of thinking two milliseconds later. 

Brendol Hux the Second prided himself on not needing anyone else, on being completely stoic and composed. On being sober as a judge at all times. 

But, of course, there was always an exception to any good rule, and it looked like Hux had just found his. 

He slapped a cockroach into submission as it crawled onto the countertop from the recesses of Kylo's utensil drawer. He could see it all now, the things he could do for this little hovel. Get in a good exterminator, slap a fresh coat of paint onto the cracking walls, maybe even polish the silverware...! His mind whirled in circles as he thought of all the use his time in home economics club would come into. He could make the place positively darling!

"Why are you smiling like that?" Kylo asked, warily. 

Hux bit back his grin, cleared his throat, and just said that he was thinking about cleaning. Kylo eyed him as though he were about to do something fishy, but let it slide.

* * *

 

"Doing some spring cleaning, are we?" Poe asked as he scanned yet another bottle of PineSol into Hux's recyclable, ecofriendly bag. "Doing quite a bit of spring cleaning." 

"Yes," Hux agreed, with perhaps more friendliness than he should have. Kylo had almost succeeded in convincing Hux of Poe's true nefarious intentions, but Hux was still undecided as to his own views on the cashier in question and, as such, was approaching with all due caution. 

"Cleaning Kylo's place, I see?" Poe asked, waggling his eyebrows at him. Hux immediately decided not to trust him; anybody who could waggle their extremities like that was certainly a deviant, and his esteemed father had warned him to always stay away from deviants if he could help it. 

"That is none of your business," he quipped back icily, and jammed his credit card rather vigorously into the chip reader. Poe was smiling widely. He looked rather unstable.

* * *

 

Poe, of course, was all but dying to gossip about this to Finn who, he was sure, even now awaited in the break room for his prince to come. Of course Hux was purchasing the cleaning supplies to clean out Kylo's place; Poe was well aware that Hux never bought anything in bulk, and with the meticulous nature of the man in question, he was very sure that Hux had any and every product necessary to clean his own domicile. That left only one solution, as far as Poe could see, and he would eat his hat if he somehow found it to be proved wrong. 

The two of them were becoming positively domestic, and Poe wondered how long it would be before he could start counting KY Jelly and boxes of condoms among the purchases. He, personally, was betting on three weeks. One month at the latest. 

Of course, they'd try to sneak it in past his notice, shoved unceremoniously in between the cat food and jars of protein powder. But Poe would notice. He would keep his eyes peeled, he vowed to himself, as he ripped off the receipt and beamed manically at Hux before wishing him a good day. 

 


	13. Cherries

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is the part where the rating changes... -wink wonk-

Hux had passed by the registers at least three times. Poe knew, for he was keeping track. BB-8 also knew, because of how many times he'd had to jab Poe in the soft spot behind his knee because a customer was waiting and because BB-8 was nothing if not the model service droid. He'd fallen out of favor with Miss Vesuvius in the cafe, and was eager to show her that he could be dedicated and could maintain constant vigilance. He peeked back. She was pointedly ignoring him, and released a little jet of steam. 

Clearly it wasn't working. He prodded Poe harder. 

Poe was grinning almost fanatically, and quite a few customers giggled nervously and hastily switched lines to a cashier who was so stoned he attempted to eat a customer's cookies before they'd even been scanned. That was, apparently, preferable, to exchanging goods and services with the lunatic at register four who'd probably just murdered someone in cold blood and left them to rot in front of the fish fingers.

* * *

 

Hux paced back and forth nervously, his shoes squeaking on the freshly waxed and polished floor. It was so shiny he could all but see his reflection, and it did not, in any way shape or form, look promising. The weight of his shopping basket seemed to be much heavier than it actually was, and he had to stop by the bananas to catch his breath and try desperately to calm his pounding heart. 

Oh. No. Bananas. He snatched his hand away from the organics, blushing fiercely as though they'd caused him a deep personal offense. The size and shape of them was much too...suggestive, for Hux's delicate sensibilities. 

Especially considering what he had in his basket, buried beneath some vanilla protein smoothies (much better than whatever slop Kylo made in his blender on a daily basis) and a plastic bag of mini bell peppers. 

Christ. He bemoaned his fate. It was just his luck that Dameron was on the registers today - didn't the man ever take vacation? A personal day off? No. Highly unlikely. He was sure Dameron existed solely to torment him, and, by extension, Kylo. Though, after nearly two and a half months of dating, he was all but convinced that Kylo deserved to be heckled at least sometimes. 

He should know; he'd been pushing Kylo to get a move on with his manuscript, which was painfully but slowly growing under Hux's gentle encouragement. In fact, Hux was rather proud of the influence he'd managed to exert over Kylo's little apartment. Rey no longer complained at the constant presence of vegetables on her plate, even asking for seconds of his mashed turnips, and no more cockroaches dared step a foot into the kitchen. The floor was so clean that Millicent, on the rare occasion he brought her over (see: Rey begged him to bring her), would even sleep on the tiles. This was no small feat; she was a rather discerning cat. 

Hux growled menacingly at the bottles of vinaigrette at his current predicament. A little old lady looked at him oddly before hastily reaching to pluck out a bottle of ranch and hurrying away. He hoped savagely that the bottle broke all over Dameron's register. 

This was ridiculous. He was a grown man, with his own apartment, cat, and batch of student loans, and this definitely should not have been as hard as it was turning out to be. Hell, his thesis was a piece of cake in comparison. 

Hux could have wept into the bunches of baby spinach, but he bit the inside of his cheek very hard and tried to maintain his composure, like his father undoubtedly had during his moments of emotional duress (see: vague accusations of tax fraud that had been laughed off and then hastily swept under the proverbial family rug). 

The condoms - several boxes of them in varying sizes - and bottle of cherry-flavored lube were all but burning a hole in the bottom of his basket. He had bought them before, of course; he was a healthy young man with a functioning sex drive. But never in this capacity. Never when he had so much to lose. 

Hux tried dragging his feet, tried peering intently at the magazines to look at Prince Harry's newest love interest, but despite his diversionary tactics, nothing seemed to work and Poe was frantically waving at him from register four. Hux was dismayed, but plopped down his basket on the conveyor belt regardless. 

He prayed for a swift and silent death as Poe began to rummage through his groceries.

* * *

 

"Well then!" Poe exclaimed, waggling his eyebrows at Hux and looking for all the world like quite the deviant that Hux's father had warned him sternly to stay away from. "Well, well, well! What have we here!" 

It was patently obvious what Poe was clutching in his grubby little paws, and Hux really did not appreciate him waving it for everyone to see. Good God, this was a family store! 

When it became evident that Poe refused to scan it without some little detail, some little scrap to chew on, Hux sighed. 

"All right, they're condoms," he gritted out. "For me. And Kylo." 

"As I thought!" Poe crowed, stuffing the condoms with excessive relish into the bottom of a plastic bag. BB8 beeped in indignation. Poe's smile fell for a moment, replaced with a look of genuine confusion. "But, er, why are there so many sizes? Unless..." Poe gasped, looking at Hux goggly eyed. "Unless you have some other people on the side!" 

"What?!" Hux all but shouted in exasperation. "Don't be ridiculous!" He was well aware his face was burning all the way to the tips of his ears. "I just...I just wasn't sure," he snapped, glaring away at the charity box and doing his best to bury his face in the collar of his jacket. 

"Oh, thank goodness," Poe gasped, pretending to fan himself dramatically with one hand. "Well, I'll tell you something. I'll wager that dear Kylo's probably a large. Build like that? All that protein powder? And have you seen the size of his shoes?" 

Hux refused to answer. He was tapping his foot frantically on the floor and praying to whatever gods might exist that Poe would just hurry up and let him leave with a shred of dignity intact. But the cashier kept babbling. 

"Maybe a medium. At smallest. But I'd put good money on the large." Poe tossed the box of smalls behind his till, never to be seen again. "Cherry? I'd never have put you down for a cherry guy. Though maybe it's poetic, in a sense, that you want to pop his cherry?" 

Poe was laughing maniacally. Hux shuddered with dismay, and frantically shoved his card into the chip reader. It beeped quickly, as though understanding of its owner's rapidly deteriorating mental state, and Hux didn't remember he hadn't used his recyclable bag until he was already nearly a mile away from the supermarket.

* * *

 

"Well. That was something," Finn said from the general vicinity of Poe's shoulder. 

Poe jumped nearly a mile in the air, and BB8 beeped up at him angrily. 

"Difficult time?" Finn wanted to know, sidling in to the little space behind the till. Poe could practically devour his aftershave. "He seemed rather angry."

"Oh, that's just Hux. Just how he always is," Poe said with a noncommittal shrug as he tried not to think about how close Finn was standing, as he tried not to think about the box of small condoms that was edging slowly but surely into view. It was almost an affront. Poe didn't like to puff himself up, but he was a force to be reckoned with. Certainly not small potatoes. He almost wished he'd kept the box of extra-large rubbers Hux had all but fled with. That would really have impressed Finn, he was sure. 

Not that that was a priority for Poe. There were bigger things to worry about, like the state of the economy and international relations and wondering what sort of lotion Finn used on his hands to make them so soft - 

"...and it looks like things will work out quite well," Finn was saying. Poe forced himself to listen.

"Er, sorry, what was that then? Kind of drifted off for a bit."

Finn's eyes twinkled. Poe wanted to swoon and slump over his till like some sort of heroine in a Victorian-era drama. Fetch me my fainting couch!

"I said it looks like things with Hux and, uh, that other guy, odd name, you know? It looks like things will work out quite well," Finn repeated, patiently, looking out towards the parking lot. Was it just his imagination, or was there a look of longing in Finn's eye? 

"Oh. Right." Poe cleared his throat. "Yeah, it looks like things are working out fabulously for them." 

They stared out wistfully towards the lot where Hux had disappeared. 

Poe edged his hand towards Finn's. One centimeter. Two. 

Their pinkies brushed, and Finn didn't pull away, much to Poe's delight. He was about to be even more daring, edge his ring finger over, too, but was rudely interrupted by a batty old lady clutching a bottle of ranch dressing and a veritable ton of cat food. In the ensuing chaos, Finn disappeared into the night (the frozen aisle) and Poe cursed his fate as he grumbled and flung cans of Fancy Feast towards BB8.

* * *

 

Hux had specifically requested that Kylo meet him, alone, at Hux's apartment, and Kylo was a bit apprehensive, if he was being well and truly honest with himself. It was like the prequel to some sort of grisly homicide novel, and he nervously smoothed down his hair as he stood in front of Hux's door and waited to be let in. 

But no. Hux wouldn't do that, he was sure. He liked Hux a great deal, and he was sure Hux felt the same way. 

Hux opened the door a few moments later, looking uncharacteristically nervous himself. He ushered Kylo in quickly. 

"Well, um, hi," Kylo began, grinning anxiously. The air had a nice smell to it, of tenderly stewed meat and vegetables, and his stomach growled with appreciation even as Hux led him to the dinner table, which was set all the way through with real silverware and china that looked as though it had cost a pretty penny. 

Hux didn't say anything until he'd already sat Kylo down and sloshed a generous measure of red wine into two glasses which weren't even spotted with water marks. For all Kylo knew, it could have been a five-star restaurant. 

He had the feeling that this was a Very Serious Evening, and was glad he'd left Rey in the care of a babysitter and the scrutinizing eye of Millicent the cat. 

He noticed Hux's hand was shaking as he reached out to strike a match and light the candles stuck charmingly into the necks of empty wine bottles in the middle of the table. The light flickered over Hux's face, and in the soft patches of light, Kylo could make out a blush that all but swallowed up his darling freckles. 

"So," Hux said in a strained voice as he passed Kylo a basket of expertly toasted bread that could have passed muster at The Cheesecake Factory, "you may be wondering why I've asked you here today." 

Kylo almost choked on the piece of bread he'd stuffed unceremoniously into his mouth. Hux sounded far too formal, far too stiff, and instantly a pool of worry unspooled inside him. 

"Um, yes, I was wondering that," he replied, spitting crumbs all over the table. Hux didn't even say anything. Another bad sign. He tried to meet Hux's eye to try and guess what sort of thing Hux was feeling, but Hux was pointedly avoiding his eyes and was staring very hard at his butter knife. "Care to enlighten me?" 

Hux frowned. Kylo swallowed, his throat suddenly dry, the bread scratching it all the way down. He took a hasty gulp of wine. Maybe Hux was trying to liquor him up to try and soften him to the oncoming blow. 

Hux wanted a divorce, his frantic mind whispered before the more rational side of him reminded him that the two of them were hardly married. 

Hux was pregnant. No. He was going bonkers. He'd taken at least two biology courses in high school. Had he gone stark raving mad? 

Hux wanted to break up with him, and was suing for custody of Rey because Kylo had demonstrated parental unfitness in the past? Well...that might be a possibility, Kylo thought. He had never been much in the habit of making Rey eat her vegetables or ensure that she went to bed at a reasonable hour. But, despite all his griping at the start of his guardianship, Rey had grown on him, and he was determined to put up a fight if this scenario was indeed the case. 

Hux frowned, pouting at the slice of pot roast he'd placed on Kylo's plate. Kylo was tempted to look down to see if it was imperfect in any way. 

"Um..." Hux was stammering. Kylo was positively shaking in his socked feet now. "Um. I was...I was maybe wondering if, um. Um. If you would...?" Hux looked up at him, visibly pained. Kylo stared at him intently, hoping his abject anxiety wasn't too obvious. "I was wondering if after this you'd maybe like to go upstairs?" Hux's question came out in a rush, his voice going all squeaky at the end, nearly escalating into a shout as he knocked over his glass of wine, and amongst all the commotion it took a few moments for Kylo to fully process what exactly he'd said. 

"I've already been upstairs," he said, gawping uncertainly. "I had to get Rey that one time, and - ouch!"

Hux had kicked him savagely under the table, glaring at him. 

Kylo winced as he rubbed at his injured shin with the heel of his other foot. 

Then the implications hit. 

"Oh!" he exclaimed, gaping even more. "Oh! You mean...you mean sex!"

Hux continued to glare at him, but it was no longer quite so heated. "Yes, that," he sniffed, cutting a bite of pot roast and popping it in his mouth. "If you...if you'd like to, that is," he added, peeking at Kylo out of the corner of his eye. 

Kylo could hardly stop the grin from spilling over his face. "I would love that!" he exclaimed, honestly, beaming so hard his cheeks started to hurt. The anxiety in his heart unclenched, and he felt positively ravenous. 

He grinned across the table at Hux, who looked more and more endearing as the minutes ticked by, and didn't even complain about the second helping of green beans Hux plopped onto his plate with a tender smile.

* * *

 

Hux's good tablecloth was irretrievably stained with a 2001 Merlot, but that was nothing compared to the feeling of champagne bubbles in Hux's soul as he took Kylo by the hand and led him upstairs to his bedroom. 

He was nervous. Yes. Absolutely. But Kylo looked like he was raring to go, and his gleeful eagerness was infectious. Hux could feel little hums of arousal thrumming through him and pooling in the pit of his belly, with the help of Kylo and the wine, and by the time Kylo had closed the bedroom door behind him and pressed him to the wall, he was beaming wide enough to match Kylo's. 

Kylo tasted like the dark chocolate lava cakes he'd made for dessert, licking into Hux's mouth with a finesse that Hux was more than a bit surprised he'd possessed, and he could hardly help moaning a bit as Kylo's kisses started to trail down over his jaw and down the column of his neck. 

"Wait, no - ah, no marks," he warned Kylo belatedly. Kylo had already left several small strawberry splotches over Hux's pale skin that would definitely show up above a collar. 

"Sorry," Kylo mumbled breathily. Hux sighed, threading his hands through Kylo's thick hair, which was, to his delight, pleasantly soft and fluffy. 

"Oh, hell with it," Hux replied, grinning almost manically up at the dark ceiling as Kylo bit what felt like a particularly large mark. "I'll just terrorize the students if they say anything." 

Kylo laughed softly, and Hux was dimly aware of Kylo's large hands fiddling at the bottom of his shirt, unbuttoning it and rubbing warm, soothing circles into his skin. Hux's mouth fell open around a languid moan as Kylo's fingers stroked lightly over his nipples, perking them to pebbled hardness. Small, bright sparks of pleasure trickled through him, and he could feel his slacks tightening. 

He would blame the alcohol for his hips tilting up wantonly against Kylo's. Kylo would remain adamant that Hux had done it of his own accord. 

"Excited, are we?" Kylo asked, pulling away from Hux's deliciously sore neck to press his forehead against Hux's in the dimness of the room. Kylo was clearly in his element here, the awkwardness and roughness of his normal self vanished, and Hux would have felt jealous if Kylo hadn't started leading him to his bed, if Kylo hadn't already captured his mouth in another bruising kiss that he felt sure would leave his lips swollen. 

Kylo pushed apart the panels of his shirt, lavishing kisses down the rest of his body, and Hux definitely didn't whine as Kylo pressed his mouth to one nipple, then the other. He definitely didn't whimper when Kylo's hands deftly unbuttoned his slacks and palmed at the bulge of his cock in his boxers. And he definitely didn't gasp, his fingers curling in the sheets, when Kylo's fingers slipped inside to pet the head of his cock. 

"So, how's this work?" Kylo breathed roughly, when he'd already worked Hux into a right state. "I fuck you? You fuck me? What?"

"Language," Hux admonished, grateful that it was dark in the room and Kylo couldn't see his face flaming. "But. Ah. I'll let it slip just this once. You can fuck me," he said, graciously, as though he was bestowing a huge favor onto the other. 

Hux rolled over to rummage in his bedside drawer for the boxes of condoms. He eyed Kylo shrewdly in the darkness. His frame was hulking, practically massive, and, oh, curses, maybe Dameron had been right. He fumbled for the large in the middle, and tossed that and the cherry flavored lube to Kylo. 

"Thanks, babe," Kylo mumbled, and Hux would have said something disparaging about how he was definitely not a babe, but Kylo was already popping open the bottle and filling the air with the sickly, overly sweet smell of cherry. 

But Kylo wasn't complaining, and Hux definitely wouldn't. It was a nonrefundable item, anyway, and he'd be damned if he was going to let perfectly good lubricant go to waste. 

He wriggled out of his pants and boxers, tossing them in a heap to the side of his bed, and waited patiently, his hands curled coyly over his cock, which was twitching with interest, as Kylo hastily undressed himself. The dim lighting left quite a bit to the imagination, but if the silhouette was any indication, then Hux was rather glad he'd gone with the larges. 

"You've done this before then, I take it?" Kylo asked, looking appraisingly over him, and Hux could feel his blush crawl all the way down his chest. 

"I have," he agreed, spreading his legs slightly and shivering as he felt the searing heat of Kylo's cock against the inside of his thigh as Kylo settled himself between his legs. "But it was a fair bit ago."

He could almost feel how disgruntled Kylo was. 

"Well, I...I'm not too sure we'll be able to do this tonight," Kylo began, uncertainly, but Hux interrupted him with a boldness that was surely brought on by an excess of tannins. 

"Don't worry," he cut in, with a smoothness that betrayed how nervous he still was. "I've...spent some time readying myself for this." 

Kylo was silent for so long that Hux began to regret saying anything, began to think Kylo might think him too desperate or something. He was about to roll over and get up when Kylo pinned him down to the sheets, his kisses bruising and wild and hungry. 

"And you didn't let me watch," Kylo hissed, nibbling - oh, no, that was definitely biting - at the junction of Hux's neck and shoulder. Hux gasped, shifting restlessly beneath Kylo, his cock starting to leak. 

"Next time," Hux promised, biting at his lip as Kylo sat back and slathered lube over his fingers. 

"I certainly hope so," Kylo replied, nudging Hux's legs apart a bit more and stroking his clean hand over Hux's inner thigh as he petted the furl of Hux's entrance and coaxed it into letting one, two, then, slowly, with a gasp and what sounded like a strangled moan, three. 

The stretch burned a bit more than Hux had been expecting, he hadn't planned enough for how thick Kylo's fingers were, but the slight ache was forgotten as Kylo crooked his fingers and rubbed at the firm nub of his prostate. Pleasure jolted down his spine, and his cock jerked against Kylo's hip. 

"Alright, alright," Kylo said, laughing as he slowly tugged his fingers out. Hux whined at the loss. "Don't fret," he soothed, and Hux was all but frothing at the mouth as he heard the slick noises of Kylo rolling a condom over his cock. 

He held his breath, biting at the swell of his lower lip as Kylo clicked the bottle of lube shut and tossed it somewhere in the depths of the mussed sheets. He closed his eyes tightly, feeling the subtle shifts of the mattress beneath the two of them as Kylo repositioned himself, grasping Hux's hips and tugging them up for easier access. 

"Breathe," Kylo commanded, his voice deep and reassuring, and, before he'd known it, Kylo had begun to nudge himself in. 

The head of his cock pressed in hotly, and it was all Hux could do to keep from coming. His head spun, a mix of wine and ecstasy, and he was hardly aware that he was crying until Kylo kissed his cheek, fully seated inside him, and asked him if he was quite alright. 

"I'm fine," he sobbed, the head of Kylo's cock nudging against his prostate and turning pleasure molten between his hips. "I'm one hundred percent fine." 

"Hm," Kylo murmured, a bit more playfully now, "I think maybe eighty percent. It's not good to fudge your numbers, you know."

Hux slapped halfheartedly at him, and would have made another snide remark had Kylo not started to move with gentle thrusts that nevertheless drove Hux mad. He cried and begged and gasped, and he was, in fact, quite sure he sounded like some porn actress in a hideously cliche role, but he was too far gone to turn back now. 

As he came, the most intense orgasm he'd had since he'd started his job as a TA, Kylo's cock twitching heavily inside him, Hux's last fading thought was that he was utterly glad Millicent wasn't there to witness this utter depravity her well-meaning owner had turned into.

* * *

 

Kylo woke up the next morning, creases from Hux's Egyptian cotton pillowcases embedded deep in his cheek, to find Hux already awake and staring at him. 

"G'morning," he mumbled, smiling dreamily at Hux and reaching out to push away a stray curl of red hair. 

Much to his surprise, Hux smiled dreamily back. 


	14. Cherries (part 2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> not too much plot advancement because in all honesty i'm pretty drunk right now

Of course, the dreamy smile was quickly replaced with a look of horror that Kylo could only describe as one that a young child might have after realizing his mother was possessed (a la The Babadook). Hux scrambled into a sitting position, shoving his hair back and out of his eyes unceremoniously, and was gaping at Kylo as though Kylo had told him he, personally, was all for the rise of GMOs in the produce industry. 

If Kylo hadn't been so over the moon with happiness, he would have felt offended. 

As it was, he was still about as dense as a brick, and only inquired politely as to if Hux had been bitten by some sort of bug that had come in through the cracked windowsill behind him. 

"Oh God, what time is it?" Hux yelped, all but throwing himself over Kylo to get a look at the digital clock on the left nightstand. Kylo groaned with pain as Hux savagely elbowed him in the ribs, but petted at Hux's back soothingly nevertheless. 

Hux's elbowing only grew more brutal. "Ten oh three!" he screeched, sounding mortified, as though someone in an organic-only, gluten-free juicery had just informed him they definitely could not accept this coupon he'd clipped from a local newspaper. "Ten oh fucking three!"

"What's the issue?" Kylo asked sleepily, yawning and stretching languidly as he watched Hux leap stark naked out of bed - a truly glorious sight, if Kylo was being honest - and scramble around looking for his clothes. "It's a Saturday." 

"My bacteria!" Hux screeched up at him from underneath the bed, where he was apparently retrieving a loose sock. Kylo admired his determination, and also the view of his ass. It was quite pink. 

"Your bacteria," Kylo repeated, trying to resist the temptation to give Hux a good swat or two across the backs of his thighs just to see handprints bloom across his skin. 

"They're on a timed feeding schedule!" Hux sounded positively apoplectic. Kylo hoped he had good health insurance; all that repressed anger and stress certainly couldn't be conducive to a good blood pressure. 

"I see," Kylo agreed, though he really didn't see at all. He had no idea about bacteria and their feeding schedules, but he doubted it could be hard. Pop some sugar in their dish and surely they were good to go, weren't they? "Can't you just call one of your...I dunno, your peons? To feed them?" 

Hux popped back out from under the bed. Kylo was dismayed to see he'd already gotten his boxers on. 

"My peons?" Hux repeated, flabbergasted.

Kylo waved his hand dismissively. "You know. Your students, whatever you call them. Say you'll give them a point back on a quiz or something if they feed your bacteria." Hux still wasn't looking convinced, but he wasn't hurrying to turn his shirt inside out, and Kylo took this as a good sign. Right, then. Full speed ahead. 

He cycled through his options. He had the Puppy Pout, which he'd been practicing in the mirror for ages, and the Sultry Come Hither, which he'd been practicing in night clubs since he'd gotten his first fake ID. Unfortunately, he had just woken up, and his mind was still rather addled, so instead of picking one or the other he tried both simultaneously, with the result that he looked like a rather awkward duck that had somehow wandered its way into a third-grade classroom of Japanese schoolchildren. 

Hux stared at him. He stared at Hux. 

"Right, then," Hux muttered, frowning, but Kylo was delighted to see that Hux was reaching for his phone. A few clicking and tapping sounds, then the swooshing sound of an email sending. 

After a few moments of breathless waiting, Kylo heard a ping. Then another. Another. Hux frowned at the screen of his phone, gnawing on his lower lip, which was still delightfully swollen from their escapades. 

"I told you they'd be frothing at the mouth to do it," Kylo said smugly, shifting over as Hux relented and clambered back into the bed next to him. "I was in college not too long ago, so I know."

"Hm." Hux made a noncommittal noise in the back of his throat, still tapping through the veritable storm of emails he'd received, apparently trying to pick out the best, most trustworthy candidate. "It's a bit irresponsible, but I suppose," - he laid stress on this word, as though Kylo were really putting him out - "I can let it slide just this one time."

"Oh, thank you," Kylo breathed, closing his eyes and mouthing kisses at Hux's neck. Hux didn't try to swat him away, and Kylo counted it as a success. Perhaps as an invitation to be a little more daring. He laid his hand tentatively across Hux's stomach, petting at the soft skin and thumbing at the fine trail of hair. 

Hux stiffened beneath him, and Kylo's fingers stopped. 

"I'm sore," Hux began, uncertainly, but Kylo could feel him shifting slightly towards him. 

"It's okay," Kylo murmured, wondering what kind of body soap Hux used. Probably something out of his price range. Maybe he could get Hux a bath bomb from Lush for Christmas, or something. Did Hux even have a tub? He'd have to find out.

His fingers slowly trailed their way down to the waistband of Hux's boxers, rubbing along the elastic slowly. Hux's breath hitched beneath him as his fingers dipped into the waistband, and Kylo was delighted to find that Hux's cock was starting to stir beneath his fingertips. 

Under the pretense of casually stretching, Kylo tossed one of his legs over Hux's to pin him there as he wrapped his hand around Hux's cock, stroking gently as he brought Hux to full hardness in his palm. The sounds of tapping from Hux's phone had noticeably slowed, and Kylo grinned in triumph as he kissed at Hux's freckled shoulder. 

There were hints of citrus, definitely. But something tangier, more exotic, perhaps? Maybe it was the lemongrass he'd heard so much about. Or maybe it was star anise. He had no idea what star anise was, in all honesty, as it wasn't an ingredient usually included in prepackaged dinners. 

But, whatever it was, Hux smelled utterly delicious. 

His cock valiantly tried to stir against the swell of Hux's hip, but Kylo sternly ordered himself not to get his hopes up. Hux had said he was sore, after all, and with this stern warning, his cock twitched in defeat and gave up its quest for the princess. If Hux had known, he surely would have been proud of his self-restraint, Kylo thought. 

Hux, for his part, was starting to breathe more heavily, and Kylo chanced a glance up. 

Two high spots of color had flushed into Hux's cheeks, and his hair was falling messily over his forehead again. He was biting at his lower lip, his eyes squeezing closed every other moment or so before snapping open to return to his emails. 

Kylo pouted. He clearly wasn't as good at distraction as he'd used to be. He still had fond memories of sucking off one college attraction hours before the deadline of a big paper, and said college attraction had consequently failed to submit it to Turnitin on time due to a combination of poor planning, Kylo, and a server failure. 

Laying one last kiss against Hux's collarbone, Kylo tugged his hand out of Hux's boxers, to the tune of a very musical whimper of protest. He flashed a smile not unkindly Hux's way, and rearranged himself between Hux's legs. 

Hux allowed him to peel off his boxers, allowed him to press kisses to the insides of his thighs. Hux was already hard, tiny drops of fluid beading at the head of his cock, and Kylo made sure to keep eye contact as he pinned Hux's hips to the bed before wrapping his lips around him. 

Hux made a sort of strangled noise in his throat, his eyes closing and his head pressing back into the pillows as his free hand darted down to tangle itself in Kylo's hair. 

"Fuck," Hux whined, his hips twitching underneath Kylo's hands. "I really - ah - I really have to send this email." 

Kylo gave him a particularly hard suck, and Hux writhed beneath his hands. He was thoroughly unapologetic.

* * *

 

Hux would have been furious if he hadn't been receiving what was possibly the best blowjob of his life (well, not much to go off of, since the only other one he'd received had been at a drunken party his freshman year). He also would have been positively enraged about Kylo distracting him from sending a very important email had it not been, well, had it not been Kylo. 

Hux was far too infatuated for his own good, but seeing Kylo's plush lips wrapped around his cock was a sight in and of itself. 

Kylo tongued at the head of his cock, rubbing the flat of his tongue over the slit, and Hux tried not to moan too loudly. For all he knew, his neighbors were still sleeping. 

Pleasure coiled tightly in the pit of his belly, and without the influence of alcohol, the feelings were only all the more intense. Hux found himself trying to thrust desperately into Kylo's mouth, but Kylo was having none of it. 

The feeling of being held down, of being rendered all but helpless, sent a mortifying jolt of pleasure straight up Hux's spine. It was certainly a position he hadn't had the opportunity to be in much before, and he would have been blatantly lying if he'd said the idea of being subjected to Kylo's whims was anything less than utterly arousing. 

"Please, Kylo," he begged, crying out and tightening his grip in Kylo's hair as Kylo shot him a triumphant look and slowly but surely took Hux's cock to the base. Hux was only glad he kept his hair well trimmed, though he was fairly sure Kylo wouldn't have minded. 

As he was about to come, his cock starting to twitch heavily in Kylo's mouth, Kylo pulled off with a slick pop that was downright obscene. 

Hux glared at him. His phone was still clutched tightly in his fist. Kylo was smirking at him, almost smugly, his lips red and swollen. 

"The fuck?" he squawked indignantly. "I was about to come, you..." He trailed off, at a complete loss for words, though he was no stranger to insulting others who had just done him a grievous disservice. 

"I...?" Kylo asked, smiling jovially at him and giving his inner thigh a swift pinch. Hux was sure it would bruise, and wasn't sure that he minded that much. "I what?"

"You absolute heifer," Hux groaned, falling back into his pillows and wanting to cry. "You...you cruel cow."

Kylo spluttered laughter. It definitely wasn't helping Hux's state of mind. His cock was still frighteningly, irritatingly hard between his thighs. 

"Is that right?" 

Hux would have shot back some reply, preferably one not related to cattle, but Kylo had already lowered his head and slipped Hux's cock between his lips again. Hux shoved his hips up, determinedly, his irritation forgotten as the pleasure of Kylo's mouth surged back. Kylo swallowed around him, humming, and Hux's phone slipped out of his grasp and somewhere into the mess of sheets around them as he reached down with his other hand to pull at Kylo's hair. 

Kylo let him, and Hux let out a very not-muffled shout as he came down Kylo's throat. 

If either of them heard the swishing sound of an email being sent, neither of them mentioned anything.

* * *

 

Four miles away, in a little hovel of an apartment, a well-meaning but overworked undergraduate microbiology student checked his email and found that his microbio TA needed him in the lab that day to feed his bacteria and also to ensure that the glucose stocks in the fridge were not as possible because they have been poiled. 

The student assumed that he perhaps hadn't been paying as much attention in Hux's instructional sessions as he needed to have been, and hurled himself out of bed to get the bacteria fed and the glucose thrown out. 

Certainly something that was poiled wasn't good anymore, he rationalized to himself as he stuffed an expired toaster pastry into his mouth as he hopped down the sidewalk, still pulling on his sneakers. 

He could really use that extra mark.

* * *

 

The next day, when Kylo had finally relinquished his hold on Hux, Hux would limp back into the lab and find that all of the glucose stores had been thrown out and his Roseobacter samples had been contaminated. He would unleash a holy rage on the lab and all who dared to enter it, but fortunately, said undergraduate was stoned out of his mind that day, and survived his TA's wrath through sheer apathy. Hux was duly impressed by the student's apparently positively massive balls, and gave him the mark anyway. 


	15. Ice Cream

"Where's Huxy?" Rey squealed loudly, much to Kylo's annoyance, as he herded her into the basket of the shopping trolley. She tugged on Kylo's sleeve, as though he possibly might not have heard her. Kylo snorted; everyone in this galaxy, and probably the next few systems over, had heard her. "Benny? Where's Huxy?" 

He sniffed. "Huxy - er, Hux - is at school." 

"At school?" Rey shrieked. She looked up at Kylo suspiciously, before aiming a rather strong and rather well-placed kick at his hip. "Benny, lying is bad!" 

"Lying?" Kylo snapped, rubbing at his hip and wincing as he pushed Rey past the display of sugar cookies. "I'm not lying. You remember we had to pick him up from school and there was a lot of people and lots of brownies?" 

Rey screwed up her face, trying to think. A look of comprehension suddenly dawned over her. "Oh," she mumbled, in a very small voice. If Kylo hadn't known any better, he would have sworn she was ashamed and ready to repent for her recent actions. "Why isn't Benny in school, then?" she asked, staring up at him and, much to his relief, not at the cookies. "Did Auntie Leia write Benny an excuse note?" 

He gawped down at her. She gawped up at him. A disgruntled shopper banged him in the backs of his ankles with the wheels of their shopping cart. 

"I don't go to school," he said, finally, once the shopper had rustled past them, shooting daggers at Kylo the whole way. "I take care of you. And I'm writing a book, remember?" 

"A book." Rey stared down at her hands. Kylo wondered if Rey could read. He hadn't seen her with a book in...well, since her parents had dropped her off with him. God, but this was scandalous! he wanted to shout. Rey was already five years old, and if she was illiterate...well. Well then. It would probably just be chalked up to another failure of Common Core and the public education system, he was sure. 

"You know," he said, waving his hand halfheartedly and continuing to remain completely oblivious to the fact that his bulky frame was all but blocking the automatic doors. "Books?" 

Rey cocked her head. Stared at him blankly. 

"People write them?" Kylo asked, growing more desperate. The poor cart's handle was threatening to shake out of its wire cage. "And they have stories? Like...uh...like Green eggs and ham. You've read that. Sam I am, you know." 

"Oh!" Rey's face brightened, and Kylo felt an unprecedented sense of relief. "Benny's writing Sam I am?" 

His heart fell again. 

"No, no, no," he grumbled, pushing her past the offending cookies and swinging his cart into the produce aisle for the first time without Hux's guidance. "I'm writing like...a grown up book." 

"Oh." Rey stared at the mountains of apples and plums Kylo was skimming through. She looked up at him hopefully as he was squeezing the plums in his palms and wondering how you knew if they were ripe. Hux would have known, but he was teaching, and had kindly asked (see: bribed) Kylo to step into the produce section for some things. "Will Benny read it to me?" 

Kylo started, dropping the plum on the wooden floor, where it burst into sticky pulp all over his shoes. Ah. Ripe then. That must have meant all of them were ripe, he deduced, and hastily toed the split plum beneath the carton and piled five more into a plastic bag. 

"Will I read it to you?" he asked absentmindedly, looking at the list Hux had texted him and wondering what kale was. He grabbed a bunch of something that looked kind of leafy and tossed it into the cart. "Maybe. It's not really for kids, I don't think." 

Much to his surprise and delight, his manuscript had grown past the prologue, past the introduction, and was now solidly in the middle ground of chapter six. He suspected Hux had had rather a heavy hand in inspiring him to continue, and was eternally grateful for the other man's presence at his side and in his bed. The main character, Thomas Flint, had fought his way through a messy divorce and had undergone a complete 180 as he trekked across the country in search of happiness. It was really all quite inspiring. A lot different from Sam I Am, if Kylo was being frank. 

"Hm." Rey frowned at the cabbage Kylo had all but thrown on top of her. "Will we see Huxy today?" 

"Yeah," Kylo agreed, trying not to smile and trying to calm the butterflies dancing in his stomach at the thought of seeing Hux. "We're picking him up from school again." 

"Will Millie be there?" Rey wanted to know. 

"Not sure," Kylo replied brusquely. He and Millicent, as of late, had not been on very good terms; she had scratched him rather viciously when he'd accidentally spilled chocolate protein shake on her, and Hux, too, had been none too pleased when Kylo presented him with his disgruntled, chocolate-scented cat. "I don't think he brings her to school." 

Rey remained silent for the rest of the time it took Kylo to shop through the produce. It was unprecedented, and he placed the back of his hand against her cheek more than a few times, wondering if she had a fever or something that was keeping her from being her regular boisterous self. She felt fine, the only indication of anything wrong her little eyebrows furrowed in thought. 

They were passing the frozen aisle, and Kylo was trying to hurry along with his frozen meals, ready to endure the screaming and clamoring for ice cream, when Rey piped up again. He steeled himself for the inevitable confrontation. 

"Do you think Mommy and Daddy will let me see Millie after they come home?" 

He looked at her. She was chewing on her lip and staring at the floor. 

"Um." Kylo was dumbfounded. Flabbergasted. He hadn't expected anything out of this line of questioning, and was caught fully off guard. "Well. I don't see why not." 

She looked up at him hopefully. "That means you and Huxy will always be married, right?" 

"We're not married," he began, and her face fell. "We just started dating, remember?" he added, though he supposed that term was relative. They'd been together for about five months, and Kylo was actually rather proud of that fact. His track record with romantic relationships had never been very good, due to the fact that he apparently had some grandfather issues, though he could hardly recall ever discussing his esteemed grandfather with anyone. 

"Will you and Huxy get married?" Rey asked then, her beady eyes focused on Kylo. It was actually rather unnerving, the force of her stare. The girl was untrained in the fine arts of sabotage and interrogation, but she was stronger than she knew. Kylo squirmed by the Marie Callendar pot pies. 

"Maybe," he hedged. "But it's too early to say." 

Rey opened her mouth to say something else. "And no," Kylo hastened to say, "you can't ask Huxy for me if he wants to marry me, ok? I have to ask him." 

"Okay," Rey agreed, amicably, though Kylo hardly believed her. "Ice cream?" she asked, and because Kylo was a firm believer in bribing her silence, he agreed quickly and handed her a gallon of cookies and cream.

* * *

 

"Wow, that's a real treat for you, isn't it?" Poe asked, not unkindly, as he used his scanner gun to scan the ice cream Rey was clutching in her greedy little hands. He hadn't seen Rey and sweets in the same basket in quite a while, now. Kylo stared at him forebodingly, as though daring him to comment any further on her dietary choices, but Poe was unruffled. He refused to be intimidated. "Is it your birthday?"

"No," Rey crowed, "but Benny wanted me to -"

The rest of her words were hastily muffled. Kylo had clapped his hand over her mouth, and was now smiling forcefully at Poe, looking strained and harried. It was not a good look on him. 

"Mhm. I see," Poe agreed, knowing full well that it had everything to do with Huxy. Kylo had tried, and failed miserably, at keeping his feelings a secret, and Poe was practically a fly on the wall at this point. 

"Fruits and veg, I see!" he commented brightly, scanning through the forlorn cabbage and some plums that looked like they had seen better days. "Hux is really changing you, eh?" 

Kylo's glare looked it could cut through a well done steak. Poe was still unfazed. He almost wanted to crane his neck over his shoulder to see if Finn was anywhere in the general vicinity, so he could see how brave Poe was in the face of adversity. 

"They're for him," Kylo gritted out. The supposed kale that he'd thrown into the cart rang up as parsley, but he was far too flustered to notice. "He...likes them."

"Mm." Poe made a noncommittal noise in his throat. "Getting domestic, the two of you are." 

He noted Kylo's hands balling into fists on his counter, next to the charity box. Poe vaguely wondered how all that pent up stress and tension and testosterone (while scanning through a frighteningly heavy jar of whey powder) were in bed. He made a mental note to ask Hux next time he came through his line. 

"So?" Kylo barked, but Poe could see a bright flush crawling up his neck. Oh, that was positively darling! The 6'2" behemoth standing on the other side of the counter, with biceps that looked like hams and thighs that could probably crush walnuts, was embarrassed! Poe made another mental note to pull the security tapes for later. For blackmail, perhaps, or just something embarrassing to bring up at what he felt was sure was the impending wedding. 

"Nothing, nothing at all," Poe said, though he was grinning deviously as he tore off the receipt and shoved it into one of Kylo's bags. And then, because he had never been good at curbing his sauciness, he added, "I just thought it was cute, was all." 

Kylo looked rather murderous. Rey had already opened her ice cream and was licking the top of it, as she did not have a spoon. If Poe had been a weaker man, he'd have run shrieking for the hills, but he was a strong individual and, moreover, there were no hills for miles, and Poe wasn't sure if he had that kind of stamina anymore.

"Oh!" he called out, as an afterthought, just as Kylo was reaching the automatic doors. He hurried out from behind his register and hurried over to the two of them, taking up a defensive position beside the cookie display. Then, with a positively lecherous smile, he asked, "Hux walking okay? Last time he came in he had a limp, thought maybe he sprained his ankle or something."

Kylo stared at him with blank incomprehension, looking for all the stars like the world's buffest buffoon, and Poe sorely wished he had a camera. 

And then it dawned on him. 

He made a sort of sound like an angry, hungry walrus, and wheeled Rey furiously out into the parking lot. Poe cackled to himself as he strolled languidly back to his register, where a line of customers was growing and tapping their feet impatiently on the linoleum.

* * *

 

Hux was taking notes on his laptop in the lecture hall and absentmindedly wondering what Kylo was getting up to when the doors opened behind him. He looked over his shoulder, a sneer ready on his face for whatever unfortunate undergraduate would have the misfortune of sitting next to him in the only unoccupied seat in the room, when the object of his current affections strutted in looking like a rather bedraggled, yet still absurdly lovely, peacock. 

The rest of the undergraduates had turned to stare at the new arrival who dared come late to the professor's midterm review, but then the professor in question launched into an in depth discussion of lysis that had them all flurrying to see the blackboard. 

"Hello," Hux whispered, trying and failing miserably to stifle a grin. Rey reached out to pat his hand, and Kylo very not discreetly planted a kiss on the corner of his mouth. He tasted like cookies. Hux was well aware that the two of them inevitably reverted to their diet of junk food and pure sugar and processed chemicals whenever he was not around, but he could hardly complain; he'd conceded to a Magnum bar the other day, and he found himself chewing on the end of his pen like he'd gnawed on the end of the cardboard stick. "You found me." 

"Don't get too sappy on me," Kylo warned him, but Hux could see he was smiling. From her perch on Kylo's knee/the armrest, Rey was squinting at the pull down screen where the professor was going over a PowerPoint on bacterial transformation. Fascinating stuff, really, but Hux was more fascinated by Kylo's presence only slightly to his right. 

He nudged his hand over, blatantly giving up on taking notes, to slip his hand into Kylo's. He felt like he was flying over the moon, and couldn't be bothered to listen to the professor drone on about something he'd already learned hundreds of times over in his career as an undergraduate student and then as a microbiology TA. 

Kylo nudged him back, hooking his foot around one of Hux's ankles. Hux was glad he sat in the back of the room; he was quite sure his face was bright red. "Pay attention," Kylo reminded him, and Hux squeezed his fingers in response. 

The professor was now showing pictures of Australia for some reason, and rambling on about the vast research opportunities and microbial diversity that abounded in the waters just off the coastline. There were pictures of whales, jellyfish, quite a lot of pictures that looked as though the professor had cut off part of the frame with his thumb, and then. 

Hux gaped at the screen. 

There was a small family of nut brown people, freckles spattered over their cheeks, all grinning very hard at the camera. And there, clutched in the mother's arms and looking like a very happy beach ball, was none other than Rey in a pink and white striped ruffled swimsuit. He gawked down at Rey, who had promptly fallen asleep once the professor had started talking. He gawked up at Kylo, who looked a little surprised, as well. 

"That's where her family is?" Hux hissed under the professor's monotone. "Australia?" 

"I - yes," Kylo mumbled, sagging back into his chair with a defeated sigh. "They asked me to watch over her while they were doing research there." 

"Do you know how long that project's grant is?" Hux all but squawked, the implications of the information running full tilt through his mind. 

"No?" Kylo asked, frowning and jostling Rey in his arms. She sighed, squeaked in her sleep, and bonked her head on the armrest, but neither she nor Kylo appeared to mind. "They...well, I guess they didn't say when they'd be coming back, but I was under the impression that it would only be for a few months at most." 

"A few months." Hux snorted. "More like a few years." 

Kylo sat bolt upright at that. Rey was still fast asleep, drooling all over Kylo's leg. 

"A few years?" Kylo whisper-shrieked. Some students turned to look at them, but most were focused furiously on scribbling or typing down every bit of nonsense that came from the professor's mouth. He looked positively, almost furiously gobsmacked. 

"A few years," Hux affirmed, a sick feeling starting to bloom in the pit of his stomach. He loved Rey, in his own way, doted on her, adored her, every other adjective in the dictionary, but he wasn't quite sure he was ready for the responsibility of near-permanent childcare for the next few years while he finished his thesis and tried to get a move on with his life. 

But then there was Kylo to consider, and the almost-not-quite-okay-maybe-it-definitely-was-love feeling that Hux had for him. The thought of breaking up with Kylo made him sick and distressed in a way he hadn't been since he'd woken late for a chemistry final. 

He glanced at Rey, who was now sprawled halfway across his own thigh. 

He glanced at Kylo, who was still staring at him in something like dismay. 

"I'll call them, I'll talk to them," Kylo mumbled, looking distinctly frazzled as he ran his hands through his hair. "I - I had no idea, Bren." 

"Mm," Hux murmured, his lips numb, his fingers refusing to type, surprised as he was. "Please do," he mumbled. And then, having resigned himself to the fact that there was nothing left to do but wait for their response, he added, with a soft smile, "Not that I think you wouldn't make a good caretaker or anything." 

Kylo smiled back, but his smile was a little strained still. Hux leaned over, his eyes scanning the crowd of students to make sure they were all fixated on the screen, and pecked Kylo on the cheek. 

He hoped he was being reassuring. 


	16. Chocolate

Kylo gulped down a burning sip of pumpkin spice latte and grimaced at his laptop screen, which was, now that he looked at it, rather grimy. He'd have to give it a thorough cleaning later; the monitor was smudged with fingerprints, and the keyboard looked and felt as though Rey had spilt graham crackers all over it. She very well could have, though for the life of him, Kylo had no idea where she'd gotten said crackers. 

He was sitting in the in-store cafe in Maz's, currently trying to compose an email to Rey's parents, otherwise known as his esteemed aunt and uncle who'd cavorted off to Australia to study coral reefs or something like that. Kylo couldn't quite claim to understand the depth of their research; he only knew that they had been on that one PowerPoint in Hux's microbiology class, and they sometimes sent him emails and text messages at odd times during the night when he was fast asleep but they were, apparently, wide awake. 

The current state of things with Rey was. Well. Quite the predicament. He'd been rather blindsided when Hux had pulled him aside after the microbiology class (and a frankly well-deserved miniature make-out session in the back of the room after the last studious undergraduate had fled to bigger and better things) and informed him exactly what Rey's parents were doing in Australia. 

_ "It's slated to be a three- to five-year project," Hux had explained, his cheeks flushed and his mouth swollen as he'd disengaged himself from Kylo's clutches and tugged down his shirt. Rey had been sleeping quite soundly, sprawled out across two seats a little ways down the row. Kylo fervently hoped the stain on the fabric was jelly or cola, but it was now six hours after the class and she was showing no signs of ill effect.  _

_ "Three to five years," Kylo had mused, trying not to panic and failing miserably. "I'd no idea." _

_ "Yeah," Hux had muttered, looking forlornly at Rey. "Not that I despise her, or children in general," he'd hastened to say, and Kylo remembered how downright adorable he'd looked. Could the great Brendol Hux the Second, all capital letters, have potential dreams of fatherhood? If one had asked Kylo a question on this topic several months earlier, he would probably have sneered in one's general direction and said something snooty about raising children on gluten-free diets and homemade yogurts.  _

_ "What is the study on that'll take them so long?" Kylo had wanted to know. "I didn't really ask them before they left. We haven't really talked about it, either."  _

_ "It's on how the slow decay of the coral reefs affects ocean populations and ecosystems," Hux had murmured, gnawing on his lower lip. "It's a huge study, but when it's finished, it'll probably be one of the hottest topics in the past twenty years. At least."  _

_ "I see," Kylo had agreed, though he hadn't really seen at all. He remembered that the harsh fluorescent lights installed in the lecture hall had made Hux look a little sallow, a little jaundiced. He remembered that he'd felt a stab of something that felt frighteningly like sorrow, even though nothing had been decided yet.  _

_ "Anyway!" Hux had said, clapping his hands on his knees and shutting his laptop with a decisive click as he stood up, pasting a strained smile over his face. "We'd better get going. The janitors tend to lock the room doors pretty early when it starts getting dark outside. And I'm sure you're starving, too." It had been more than he usually said, and this had been more than enough to give Kylo cause for concern.  _

The situation, as it was, was rather serious. 

Hence why he'd now spent - he glanced at the clock - three hours and counting trying to compose an email to his esteemed aunt and uncle trying to politely inquire when they planned to retrieve their daughter. Not, of course, he'd make sure to add, that Rey was being a bother or that he was ungrateful for the time he got to spend with his little cousin, but he was just curious, that was all! 

He glanced at Rey, who was poking the whipped cream on top of her mug of hot chocolate with the tip of her spoon desolately. She looked almost sad, and he felt guilty about snapping at her earlier when she'd tugged at his sleeves and started begging him incessantly if they could perhaps go and see Millicent. 

He'd said that they would, but reminded her that Huxy was working, the concept of which she apparently couldn't quite grasp. 

He took a deep breath and tried again. 

"Dear Auntie Ann -" 

Ugh. No. He scrapped it with a growl of frustration. Auntie? He was a grown man with a bachelor's degree and the next Great American Novel in progress on his hard drive, and grown men like that didn't address their emails to their aunts like that. 

"Dear Aunt and Uncle -" 

That was better, he thought idly to himself as he gnawed frantically on the nails of his other hand. It was a bad habit he'd picked up in undergraduate, and one that particularly offended Hux's delicate sensibilities. He lost himself for a few minutes, thinking about the way Hux's hands always seemed to be perfectly cared for, the nails shiny and manicured, the skin soft like he perhaps applied lotion every morning and night. 

He dreamed about Hux squirting a glop of lotion into his palm, his face red, chewing on his lip as he reached between his legs...

"And what's this?!" a voice shrieked in the distance behind him, and though he was hardly doing anything illicit, Kylo only barely managed to suppress his knee jerk reaction to slam the lid of his laptop closed and bolt from his chair. His pumpkin spice latte and Rey's hot chocolate rippled as the footsteps of a great terrifying monster drew ever closer. 

Poe's head popped out from behind a display of canned tomatoes. Kylo sneered at him in a way that he would generously have described as frightening. Poe appeared not to care. This impressed Kylo quite greatly, and in his awe of the man's unflappable demeanor, he allowed the monolith to draw closer yet. 

If one had asked Poe, Poe would merely have said it was mostly due to the fact that Kylo had a shred of spinach stuck between his teeth, and this reduced the fearsome effect of his glare quite a bit. What was more terrifying was that, somehow, Hux had gotten Kylo to eat spinach. 

Poe had much to fear from such a man. 

"Hello, sweetheart!" Poe all but shrieked as he plopped himself down next to Rey. Rey allowed herself to be cuddled and fawned over for exactly three and a half seconds before promptly sticking out her little fist and asking if Poe had brought her any candy. 

Much to Kylo's dismay, Poe drew a peppermint patty in its shiny wrapper from the pocket of his frankly, hideous, shop brand vest and slapped it down on the table in front of her. Now that Rey was sufficiently preoccupied, Poe leaned himself across the table, inserting himself much too far into Kylo's personal space. Kylo grimaced as he tried to draw the laptop away from Poe, but the man's curiosity was insatiable. 

"I would just like to know what your plans regarding Rey were," Poe read, squinting at the type even as Kylo tried to maneuver the screen away from him. Rey looked up for a brief instant at the mention of her name before hastily returning to her eternal struggle with the plastic wrapper. Poe looked at him questioningly. "What plans, then?" 

Unlike his normal nosy, irritating demeanor, Kylo was surprised to find that Poe sounded genuinely curious. Perhaps there was also a hint of concern in his voice, too. Kylo tried not to read too much into it. 

"Er," he began, huffing in irritation as he deleted the last line of text he'd written. "Rey's parents - my aunt and uncle - are in Australia, doing science research."

He would have stopped there, and any other normal person would have left the issue at that, but Poe was far from a normal person. Kylo couldn't believe he'd been so foolish as to try and think Poe would accept a thing like that at face value. 

"Go on," Poe prompted, his eyes wandering over Kylo's shoulder. Kylo whirled around to see if there were any other people in the cafe that might be listening in on his personal affairs, but there was just the little bagging droid that usually accompanied Poe at the register. It was apparently trying to impress the espresso maker with what looked one of the model ships children glued together from a box set of pieces. Unfortunately, it looked rather haphazard and flimsy; this, perhaps, was understandable, for Kylo knew those types of droids did not have opposable thumbs. 

"Your droid stole a freighter," he informed Poe, hoping this transgression would be enough to distract the cashier. 

Poe flapped this information away nonchalantly, as though it happened all the time. Kylo privately thought that that certainly couldn't have been good for store revenue. 

"What's the situation?" Poe repeated, frowning at Kylo. "Really." 

It was Poe's serious demeanor that had Kylo sighing and getting into a conversation with the man that he'd never in his wildest dreams imagined would continue past the extent of Poe making snarky remarks on the contents of his shopping cart. "Well, they're supposed to be gone for a few years," he mumbled. Rey had skipped off to play with the espresso machine, much to the distress of the little orange and white droid. Kylo took a sort of savage pleasure in the droid's unhappiness. "And, well, it's gonna sound bad, I guess, but I don't know if Hux and I can stay together and still take care of her. It's kind of a big commitment." He sighed heavily. "And I still really want to date Hux."

"Like how much?" Poe wanted to know. 

"Like a lot," Kylo emphasized, ready to wring his hands if that would be a good demonstration of exactly how much he wanted to continue dating Hux. "A lot a lot." 

"A lot a lot," Poe repeated, leaning back in his chair and making a sort of thoughtful whistle. "You're in rather deep, aren't you?" 

Kylo didn't reply. It had clearly been a rhetorical question.

* * *

 

The gravity of the situation didn't hit Poe until Hux came in later that evening with his shopping basket and recyclable bags. He'd believed Kylo, but he'd only believed him with more than a few grains of salt. Perhaps it had been the contents of the salt shaker itself. Kylo, being Kylo, had a flair for the dramatic and a tendency to exaggerate. It fit his personality quite well. 

Poe scanned Hux's items in silence, which was rather unprecedented, considering how he had all but been bursting at the seams to ask Hux, in no uncertain terms, what the sex with Kylo was like. 

But Hux looked a little bit disappointed. A little bit crestfallen. There was that little furrow between his eyebrows that marred his usual stony, smooth expression, and even this small show of emotion had Poe quickly realizing just how serious the situation was. 

And then he saw it. 

There, tucked between the bags of organic produce and the skim milk, wedged between the block of Jarlsberg cheese and a container of leafy greens. 

It was a single bar of dark chocolate, 80%. 

He looked at Hux with nothing short of disbelief as he picked it up to scan it through. Hux said nothing, didn't even meet Poe's eye to challenge his unspoken question. 

As far as comfort and/or junk foods went, it was rather tame. Could even be argued as heart-healthy if eaten in sparing quantities. Poe placed it carefully in the bag, his mind working double time as he dissected all the implications of Hux buying a bar of chocolate. 

"Er," he began, clearing his throat; his voice was a little raspy with disuse. He had spent the past two minutes in silence, after all, as he'd rung Hux up. 

Hux looked up at him. 

"Are you...feeling alright?" Poe ventured, frowning in concern. Perhaps it was just the lighting in the store, but Hux looked a little thin. Maybe it was stress from upcoming finals or something, and the grading and stuff he'd need to do for them. It was a possibility, certainly, but Poe would have been willing to bet good money that it had something to do with Kylo. "You look a little...well," he waved his hand in the air vaguely. "A little worse for wear, I guess."

It was only indicative of how not-well Hux was feeling; the other man didn't even snap at him and tell him to mind his own beeswax. Poe's internal panic meter was blaring klaxon calls. "I've been better," Hux muttered, reaching over Poe's side of the counter and tearing off the receipt that had printed out a few moments before. "Nothing that won't fix itself, though. I've just got a lot of things to think about right now." 

"Right," Poe said uncertainly, and he was about to offer Hux his full-fledged support if ever he needed it, but by the time he worked up the audacity to tell Hux he was rather the expert in all things romantically related, Hux had already beelined towards the automatic doors. In his haste to leave, he'd left behind a single onion, rather lonely looking, in its plastic bag. 

Poe considered chasing after him with the onion and a healthy dose of positive camaraderie and support through these trying times, but ultimately decided to leave it. The onion was seventy-nine cents on sale, and, like Hux had said, he had a lot of things to think about right now. 

Perhaps the thinking was best left to oneself. At least for the present moment. 

Poe put the lone onion to the side, making a mental note to return it to the produce bin later, and turned to greet the next customer.

* * *

 

Hux gnawed ambitiously on the corner of a dark chocolate square and sipped worriedly at a glass of Merlot that, on second thought, hadn't been left to breathe nearly enough. He wished he'd managed to obtain the coveted wine aerator device that had been a gift at last year's Christmas white elephant. Alas, his luck had been poor that night - probably a combination of far too much store-bought eggnog and the exhilaration of finding a packet of beautiful marbles in a Christmas cracker - and Hux had ended up being the proud recipient of a toaster that happened to toast obscene words into the bread. 

Kylo had been tickled pink when he'd found it in the back of Hux's kitchen cupboard, growing old and dusty with disuse, and had quickly begun to toast anything and everything that looked like it even had a remote resemblance to bread. 

Oh. Kylo. Hux's throw tightened, and he took another hasty sip of wine while he contemplated putting on a romance-drama (a la The Notebook) and comforting himself with his chocolate and a box of tissues. Millicent looked at him with something that looked suspiciously like pity, curled up into a fluffy little ball on the other end of his couch and chewing on a little pink and green striped sock Rey had left there some night.

He chewed on his lip as he flicked on the television. The flickering pictures danced across his face as he thought about what to do, and the dulcet tones of some unnamed female singer swooned across his living room as he sighed heavily and pulled his laptop toward himself. He'd recently gotten around to switching his desktop picture to one of him and Kylo, and it was his own private love and joy to minimize his browser windows and see it. As such, he'd been getting a little soft in lab sections, and his students were taking full advantage of that. 

Well, he sniffed to himself as he opened his email and clicked on the pencil icon to start composing a new message, they certainly wouldn't be the ones laughing when the final came around! Hux had already started preparing the theoretical exam portion, and it was devastatingly difficult. But, of course, manageable if one had studied and prepared properly. 

He searched through his contacts book. Ah. There they were. 

Some teenage girl cried in her lamplit window while her paramour of the semester waited in his car outside and stared up at her silhouette on the television screen. It was all quite cliche, and Hux lapped up the ambience as he settled his fingers on his keyboard and began to type. 

He sipped his wine, ate his chocolate, and wrote his email. It started off as a purely clinical one asking if perhaps the esteemed doctors at the Gregory Markham Institute in Australia would be so kind as to return to deliver a seminar on their studies. But no, of course they wouldn't do that, he reasoned to himself as he poured another healthy splash of red into his empty glass. They could deliver any and all seminars on their research over the internet. Millicent stared at him disapprovingly; after all, it was a school night, and this seemed to be downright irresponsible of her owner. 

His email later became an inquiry as to whether they might return soon; the labs on the university campus were undergoing some renovations and perhaps they might like to move their own files into a newly constructed lab? This was utter blather; as far as Hux knew, the university had no plans to remodel the laboratory buildings, and had instead spent a hefty amount of a rather generous recent donation to construct a dance quad. Whatever that was. 

The girl whispered on the telephone to her boyfriend that he had to meet her at the corner of Cherry and Oak at midnight; she loved him too much to go one day without seeing him. Hux glanced anxiously at his cell phone lying innocently on the coffee table. It was still silent, its screen dark. Kylo and Rey had been slated to come over sometime this evening, but it was now nearly a quarter to eight and there was still no sign of them. 

Hux considered calling for half a minute. Just a friendly inquiry to ask where they were, that sort of thing. Surely it was something he, as Kylo's boyfriend and Rey's secondary guardian, had the right to ask. 

But no, he thought to himself determinedly as he turned back to the email. This first, and then he would see. 

As such, the effects of one, and then two, and then three and a half, glasses of wine worked wonders for Hux's normally very dry writing. Rey's parents would receive an email from Brendol Hux the Second, a microbiology TA and instructional lab lead at the university, detailing his fascination with their research as well as a growing fascination with their nephew. It was a heartfelt email written with a fair bit of anxious lip-chewing on Hux's part, and he'd sent it before he'd proofread it, scared he might lose courage. 

Kylo became Kyle. Rey became Reg. Brendol became Brendon, via the joys of autocorrect and the fact that Hux hadn't upgraded to the latest OS and as such did not enjoy the benefits of modifying autocorrect. 

He clicked his laptop closed and took another healthy sip of wine. He was feeling quite hot under the collar now, and he was sure it wasn't just because he'd left the oven in the kitchen on to warm the dinner he and Kylo were supposed to be having right about now. 

Vivid thoughts and worries flashed through his mind, and he clicked his television to mute as he got up and wobbly paced around his apartment. Perhaps Kylo had been in a car accident, he thought, his heart pounding a fierce tattoo in his chest as he imagined the scene of the wreckage. Maybe Rey had been kidnapped, or hurt, and Kylo was at the police station or hospital as they spoke. 

And maybe, a tiny voice whispered in the back of his mind, one that only appeared when he was starting to go all three sheets to the wind, maybe he forgot about you. 

Hux felt the back of his throat start to clog up, and shook his head furiously as he tried to think of something else. Of anything else. 

His phone was still irritatingly silent. 

Minutes that felt like hours slowly passed, and the girl had reconciled with her boyfriend on the television. Hux's head was spinning, and the wine level in the bottle had dropped dangerously low. 

He was considering the logistics of perhaps filing a missing persons report, and was nearly in tears, when he heard a knock at the door. 

He scrambled for it, nearly tripping over Millicent, who had charged at the door in the exact same moment. His clumsy fingers fumbled with the lock and chain, and his heart soared with relief as he flung his door open to find Kylo standing behind it, smiling a bit sheepishly at him and clutching Rey by one hand and a rather wilted-looking bunch of chocolate-dipped strawberries from Edible Arrangements in the other. 

"Sorry I'm late," Kylo began, "but I -" 

Hux could hardly care less as he all but flung himself at Kylo and gave him a kiss worthy of its own romantic movie. Kylo was pleasantly surprised, and Rey was distracted from the spectacle by the appearance of Millicent from around her owner's ankles. 

"Been drinking?" Kylo asked, a bit breathlessly, as Hux finally let him go. 

"A bit," Hux agreed, beaming so hard he could feel his cheeks starting to go sore. 

"It's a school night," Kylo tutted teasingly, brushing past Hux and toeing off his shoes neatly in the foyer. This simple action sparked a jolt of tenderness in Hux's soul, and he quickly hurried Rey and Millicent inside before his neighbors could see how soft he was going in his old age. 


	17. Keys

Much to his (unspoken) relief, Millicent's antics proved more than enough for Hux to shut Rey and his cat up in the spare bedroom with a pile of pre-approved DVDs for them to watch on a miniature player that Hux had unearthed from the back of the storage closet under the stairs. Kylo had pre-approved them, and Hux was dying to ask why he had approved Jaws, The Matrix, and The Terminator series, but had somehow gotten around to putting a veto on Back to the Future. Perhaps he had something against time travel and Marty Mcfly's red puff jacket. Hux could relate. It was a fashion travesty of the highest magnitude. 

However, before he could ask, Kylo had already pinned him to the sofa and was kissing every inch of him he could reach. A good amount of these kisses landed on Hux's neck, where they were sure to show up over the collar of a lab coat, and Hux was wondering if he could possibly pull off the whole indoor-ascot thing he'd seen in a recent issue of GQ when Kylo shoved his knee rather rudely between Hux's thighs and ordered him to stop thinking. 

Hux moaned, his head spinning with the wine and Kylo's attentions. The romantic movie had already run through its credits, and the television screen was streaming something that looked suspiciously like an episode of Naked and Afraid. Hux was hoping he'd be naked very soon, but also had no desire to be terrified. Admittedly, he'd frankly been a little shocked by the sheer size of Kylo's cock in the sobering light of day, but he was hoping that he'd gotten over it by now. 

"Hush, you'll wake the beast," Kylo hissed into Hux's collar bone, his hand doing something very interesting with Hux's nipples. Hux muffled his next moan into Kylo's shoulder, obligingly. He was quite sure that the beast was not sleeping, as he could still hear some frighteningly loud thumps coming from the room she was sequestered in. 

"I - ah," Hux whimpered, threading his fingers through Kylo's thick hair and hugging him closer as he writhed on his sofa cushions, "I wanted to talk to you about Rey and her parents."

Kylo pulled off him with a slurping, smacking noise so loud that it would have been downright embarrassing had Hux not already consumed the better part of a bottle of wine. He poured generous glasses for himself, after all. 

Kylo studied Hux intensely, and Hux was quite aware that perhaps Rey's parents, and Kylo's situation, by default, were not exactly topics of stimulating conversation. Thankfully, Kylo graciously allowed him to prop himself up on one elbow, watching him as he smoothed his tongue over his swollen lips and tried to catch his breath. 

"Yes, what about them?" Kylo asked, warily. Hux was aware that the television screen was now depicting a woman scrabbling under a log for grubs. "I've sent them an email."

Hux was momentarily dumbstruck by the fact that anyone would resort to eating grubs, and that Kylo had taken it upon himself to send an email. He vaguely hoped that it was at least relatively courteous; despite the fact that Kylo was their nephew, he hardly thought it prudent to send a strongly-worded email to such respected scientists. It would have felt like the modern day equivalent of sending Isaac Newton a carrier pigeon with the missive detailing exactly how and why his theories of force and gravity were complete and utter crock, as deemed so by the Catholic church. 

"You...you did?" he asked, faintly. Kylo looked unwaveringly serious. "I...I um...I did, also."

"Did you?" Kylo asked, though he looked rather happy about Hux's confession. "That's fantastic, really, I'm sure they'll listen to whatever you wrote, you're probably much better with words than me and I kind of wrote it in a hurry..." 

"Oh," Hux said, shortly. Kylo was looking at him hopefully, his full lips adorably flushed, and Hux really had no inclination to tell him that he was at least 95% sure that the email he'd sent hadn't been exactly coherent. There was also the concerning matter of the small gift he'd bought Kylo that was currently wrapped in a small square box and squirreled away in the back of his nightstand. 

Hux figured he'd get to that later. Possibly after sex, preferably before dessert. He'd made miniature red velvet Bundt cakes with dark chocolate drizzle and a sprinkling of blood orange glaze, and was rather proud of them. 

"Oh?" Kylo asked, a faint smile playing around his lips. 

"Oh," Hux affirmed, winging a prayer to whatever gods might exist that Ben's aunt and uncle remembered what it was like to be a young, relatively strapping, desperate graduate student frantically in love. It was a trap he'd never planned to find himself in, and yet somehow his heart had gotten the better of him. 

"Glad that's settled, then," Kylo murmured, his smile broadening as he pinned Hux to his sofa again, biting at the swell of Hux's lower lip while his free hand fiddled with the waistband of Hux's pants. Hux tilted his hips up obligingly and allowed Kylo to pull his pants and boxers down just enough to free his cock, and all but whined wantonly as Kylo's fingers played around the tip. 

"I thought you weren't going to show," Hux whimpered, Kylo's hand wrapping around his cock and giving him one loose, languid stroke from root to tip. "I thought maybe you had other plans tonight."

"No, no, Bren, darling," Kylo soothed, sucking a hickey onto his pulse. Hux would claim later to his astounded class that he'd just been mauled by a vicious animal. "No, no, how could you think that? I like you too much."

"I like you, too," Hux whispered, his hands flying quickly to the button and fly of Kylo's jeans, suddenly frantic to get Kylo as undone as he was. Kylo's cock, once freed from its confines, spilled hot and heavy into his fingers, and Hux smiled wildly at the resulting groan that rumbled through Kylo's chest. "I think I like you more than is wise." 

"You think so?" Kylo asked, though it was blatantly obvious that he wasn't fully listening. Hux could hardly blame him; there were more pressing matters at hand, like the way Kylo's hips were canting almost imperceptibly into Hux's hands, and the way Hux's cock was starting to throb lightly under Kylo's ministrations. At this rate, he wouldn't make it to his bed, and he was starting to balance the cost of having his sofa professionally cleaned with the pleasure of allowing Kylo to fuck him without abandon on one of his finer pieces of furniture. 

"Mmhm," Hux mumbled, arching into Kylo's hands, his breath running ragged in his chest. "Kylo, bed," he implored, trying to nudge Kylo off him. Much to his relief, Kylo obliged, but only after making a muffled, undoubtedly snide remark about Hux's love for upholstery. Hux ignored it in favor of pushing Kylo up the small flight of stairs to his bedroom and shutting the door firmly behind him. 

His legs were still a bit shaky from Kylo's attentions and the wine pounding through his bloodstream, and Kylo easily toppled him into his once-pristinely made bed. Hux wondered if Kylo would be averse to the idea of possibly spending more nights in his bed. If perhaps one day they might be able to call it their bed. Of course Kylo might want to bring his godawful, stained linen sheets, but Hux could convince him to burn them in the compost bin, he'd say he'd suck his cock, pose for a saucy pinup calendar for his personal archives - 

"Hux?"

"What?" Hux asked, abruptly yanked from his own private little fantasies. Kylo was looking up at him, his palms pressed flat against the obscene stretch of Hux's thighs. Hux was glad he'd taken up yoga. "What did you ask?"

Kylo laughed gently, a sound that had Hux shivering at the deep, rich rumble. He'd never in all his years imagined he'd one day be bedded by someone with such blatant disregard for the environment, what with his paper bags and industrial bug spray and TV dinners. 

"I was just asking you if it would be okay to make love to you." 

Hux shivered again. It was the first time either of them had brought up the big L word, but Kylo appeared to be unfazed by its sudden appearance. 

"I - yes," he murmured, watching Kylo dazedly as Kylo smiled quickly at him and leaned over to his nightstand to scrabble for a condom and the lube. (Hux had, upon realizing how sickly sweet the cherry smell was, quickly switched to an unscented version, but the damage had been done and Poe never failed to relentlessly tease him about cherries whenever Hux had the misfortune to enter his checkout line.) 

"You're lovely, you know that?" Kylo asked, almost conversationally, and Hux would have responded with something sassy and snarky had Kylo not pressed two slick fingers into him and set him to writhing and twisting in the sheets. His fear and anxiety of only an hour or so earlier had all but disappeared, and all he could think about was how much he wanted Kylo, needed him, loved him. Kylo's fingers were rubbing firmly over the nub of Hux's prostate, and pleasure was sparking up his spine to pool in the pit of his belly. His cock was twitching between his thighs, and Kylo took enough pity on him to lean down and press a kiss to the weeping head. 

Hux could have cried. Perhaps it was the wine, perhaps it was the romantic movies, but he felt far more sensitive tonight than usual. He felt close already, much closer than he thought he ordinarily would have felt from a (admittedly, rather nice) make-out session and a few well-timed strokes to his cock, and the feeling only intensified as Kylo hooked his legs around his waist, frowning in determined concentration, and pressed his cock in. 

Hux sobbed, fisting his hands in his sheets as he arched in to Kylo's movements. It felt like far too much, and he could hardly believe he hadn't come all over himself like an eager teenager. 

"You're mumbling, dear," Kylo murmured, leaning down to whisper in Hux's ear and press a kiss to his jawline. "Does it feel nice?"

Hux nodded, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes, tossing his head back into the covers as Kylo's hand darted between his thighs to wrap around his cock, the flat of his thumb rubbing over the head and dipping slightly into the weeping slit. Hux's hips were bucking into Kylo's fingers and back into his thrusts, without the slightest thought to the rhythm Kylo had set, and ordinarily Hux would have been shocked and embarrassed by his apparent lack of sexual finesse, but far too many events had transpired in the past few hours for him to care too much. 

"I want," he began, before Kylo's next thrust drove the breath out of him in a choked sob, "I want-" 

"Yes, love," Kylo crooned, leaning over Hux, his hands coming up to pin Hux's wrists to the sheets. Hux whined, his hips tilting up needily to grind his cock against the ridges of Kylo's abdomen. God, but he was stacked, and the friction felt wonderful against his aching flesh. He vaguely wondered in some part of his mind if it was possible to achieve musculature like Kylo's without having to resort to protein powder or eating a diet regimen of seven roast chickens a day. 

"I know what you need," Kylo whispered, pressing a kiss to Hux's slack mouth. "I know." 

Hux cried out, struggling slightly against Kylo's hold, but Kylo's grip was tight, strong, secure, and Hux privately thought that he'd never felt more loved as he came, his cock twitching roughly in the small space between them.

* * *

 

Hux woke up the next morning with something of a hangover, his headache only exacerbated by the presence of Kylo's hulking frame in the bed next to him. Sometime after he'd come, Kylo had clearly taken it upon himself to clean the both of them up and tuck them in; there was none of the telltale signs of stickiness between his thighs, no indication of a crusty patch on the sheets, though Hux had every intention of tossing his sheets into the laundry just as soon as he could get Kylo up. 

"Get up," he hissed, prodding Kylo rather roughly in the ribs. Kylo mumbled into the crook of his arm, buried his face further in the pillow. "C'mon," Hux wheedled, switching tactics. "If you get up, I'll let you fuck me in the shower."

That, clearly, was enough to penetrate through Kylo's heavy sleeping defenses, and the other man jolted awake with a quickness that would have Hux alarmed had he not still been waking up himself. 

"Will you?" Kylo wanted to know, gawping at Hux as though Hux had just told him he was the next messiah. "Thought you said it was something out of a cheap porno and something you never intended to emulate."

Hux sniffed. "So I did, so I did," he agreed, "but I am willing to make some exceptions." 

"Oh, excellent," Kylo smiled. Hux listened hard. He could still hear Rey snoring off in the spare bedroom. Playing with Millicent had obviously tired her out. "I'll just go hop in then, get it nice and warm for you." 

Kylo rolled himself out of bed, and Hux was rather admiring the view of his - frankly - spectacular ass and the constellation of moles and freckles across his back, when the prodding memory of the gift in the back of his nightstand drawer occurred to him. 

"Wait," Hux called, rolling himself over to rummage in the nightstand. Kylo paused in his tracks, turning to look back over his shoulder at Hux, confusion etched over his face. "I've got something."

"I don't think the lube you've gotten is water-based, it might not work so well in the shower," Kylo murmured gently, but Hux refused to be deterred. 

"No, here," he muttered, his fingers finally closing around the little square velvet box and pulling it out to show Kylo, whose eyes grew quite wide. Hux refrained from adding the metaphor "big as dinner plates," because he was quite a literal-minded person and probably would have asked Kylo if he needed to go see an optometrist had such an incidence occurred. "For you."

Kylo dashed back to Hux's side, dropping himself to his knees next to the bed with a loud crack that had Hux wincing in sympathy, and grabbed for the box with a look of wondering disbelief. 

"Bren," he whispered, his fingers playing with the lid, "I - I'm not sure I know what to say." 

It belatedly dawned on Hux how it must have looked, and he groaned, part from hangover-induced aggravation and part from Kylo's reaction, as he swatted Kylo fondly on the side of the head. "No, not asking you to marry me. Not yet," he added, far too hastily as Kylo's expression fell slightly. "I usually save that for after I've gotten my student loans all paid off."

Kylo's expression brightened, and Hux huffed a quiet sigh of relief. 

Kylo popped the box open, and his expression brightened even more. It was as though a ray of blinding sunlight had shot into the room (and, in fact, one had; it had fallen through a chink in Hux's bedroom blinds and refracted off a full-length mirror on the opposite side of the room), and, as a result, Hux was all but stupefied by Kylo's seemingly angelic reaction. 

A shiny silver, freshly engraved key lay on the bed of crushed velvet in Kylo's palm. Hux was still privately sulking over how some incompetent employee at the key and lock store had lost his receipt, but Kylo's reaction was all worth it. Hux rejoiced as Kylo plucked the key out of the velvet bedding and laid it reverently on the bedside next to his battered wallet before leaning over to kiss Hux on the cheek. 

"An invitation to move in, then?" Kylo asked, his eyes shining as he pulled back. Hux's heart skipped a beat. Perhaps he'd have to start making the most of his student healthcare, get a visit in to the cardiologist. 

"Perhaps," Hux sniffed, trying - and failing miserably - to conceal the rampant joy flitting through his soul. "Or just to visit, whenever. Though I, for one, personally do not see the charm and appeal of a life in that little cockroach-infested hovel." 

"I'd love to," Kylo murmured, though it was unclear what he was responding to. "I'd love to wake up next to you every morning and see your pretty face the first thing." 

Hux snorted, though he was sure his face was flushed to the roots of his hair. "I'm glad at least one of us is a looker." 

"Me, too," Kylo replied, beaming, apparently unaware, or uncaring, of Hux's flustered snark. "I love you, Bren, you know that?" 

Hux was ready to curl up into a ball and die from happiness, his face flaming. He was almost sure one might be able to cook an egg on his cheek. As he was not an expert in the habit of spontaneous combustion, Hux merely curled up beneath his covers and mumbled a hasty, "I love you, too," a smile threatening to crack his face in half as Kylo pounced on his duvet-covered lump and covered him with kisses. 


	18. Cardboard

"Christ almighty!" Hux yelped in dismay as something with far too many legs skittered across the back of his thigh. Kylo looked up, half-blinded from the alarming amount of dust that had risen from his floor, and used the convenient distraction as an excuse to slap Hux fondly on the ass. It was an action that he had never in all his life envisioned doing, but then again, he'd also never envisioned Hux as his partner of choice. There was something that felt a little Twilight Zone-ish about it, and he sometimes pinched himself very hard when Hux wasn't looking just to make sure that everything still seemed relatively real. 

Hux's resounding glare and vicious smack to Kylo's wrist with his tea towel rag felt quite real. 

"Sorry," Kylo apologized, though he wasn't sorry at all. "I was trying to get the cockroach."

"Right, of course," Hux snipped back, hardly looking convinced. Kylo tried to feign a smile, but it came out as more of a grimace instead as he rubbed at his now-smarting wrist. "Why this building hasn't been condemned yet is a mystery to me. You know that's why things like housing boards and associations exist, right? So people don't have to live in a boxed-in equivalent of a dumpster?" 

Rey was perched on the edge of a couch cushion whose stuffing was leaking out through a slit in the side. She was babbling at something she held in her hand, and Hux advised her not to eat it, whatever it was. 

"I'd burn the place down, but I don't really want to be labeled an arsonist at this point in my life," Kylo offered helpfully, squashing another cockroach that was making its surreptitious way towards Hux's hand on the counter. "But I don't think I would have worn shorts to a house cleaning." 

Hux's glare was even more vicious than the first, if that was possible. Possibly he'd had years of practice with it, and Kylo was sure that had he had Hux as an instructional lead in college, he'd have run fleeing for the hills (see: the undergraduate advisement office) and begged to be put into another discussion section. Perhaps see if he could possibly defer his graduation to the time when Hux set off for better pastures. 

"It was unseasonably warm today," Hux sniffed. Kylo couldn't disagree with that. It was an oddly warm late fall day outside, without a single cloud in the sky. Hux had apparently walked over from his place (Kylo didn't see why the man refused to use the modes of transportation available to him, especially since he had both a "car he kept in good shape" and a bicycle), and his pale face was spattered with more freckles than usual. In short, it was downright adorable, and the dark blue shorts he was wearing even more so. Kylo rarely saw Hux outside of the confines of the bedroom looking anything less than professional, and he vaguely wondered if perhaps Hux was planning to give him some sort of prize for stepping up to the plate and doing some spring cleaning. 

Hux opened the fridge and made a face of abject horror and disgust. Ah. Perhaps no prizes today. Kylo hung his head in shame as Hux carefully picked out something that looked like a congealing box of carry-out. He had no idea when he'd purchased it, since he'd been spending a vast amount of time at Hux's apartment (their apartment? maybe? he wondered with a fuzzy feeling in his chest), and so it was with a sinking feeling of dread that he realized it must have been languishing in his refrigerator since quite possibly what felt like the Beginning of Time. 

"I have never in all my years met somebody who managed to keep ketchup long enough for it to turn green," Hux muttered, rummaging now through a utensils drawer and drawing out a pair of tongs that Kylo couldn't remember ever having used. He was going through the contents of the fridge and the vegetable crisper with the look of someone very hard at work performing a particularly difficult brain operation, and Kylo could feel his chance at sex with Hux that day evaporating rather quickly. 

Hux reexamined the label. "Oh, no, my mistake," he muttered, though not graciously. "This is apparently relish. That the wrong label has been affixed to. I was hoping, for your sake, that you really had not managed to keep a smoothly textured condiment long enough for it to become chunky." 

Kylo was a bit affronted by this. "I didn't ask you to clean the fridge out," he murmured. 

Hux pulled his head out of the depths of the dairy drawer and coolly glared at him. He silently withdrew a packet of Kraft singles with the tongs that looked as though they had undergone intensive radiation at a nuclear power plant. 

"At this rate, you may as well just inform the landlord that the next tenants will have to buy a new fridge," Hux snorted, before stuffing the radioactive cheese into a black garbage bag at his feet. 

Kylo was too busy processing the implication of Hux's words - especially the next tenants - to find offense with the way Hux was grumbling about the state of his appliances. 

"Next tenants?" he asked, hopefully looking at Hux's back and admiring the way the soft fabric of his shirt clung to his skin. "Does that mean...possibly...?"

"That you'll be moving in? Yes," Hux agreed, as though they'd already discussed this several thousand times and he couldn't believe Kylo had forgotten it yet again. "I cannot, in good conscience, allow you and Rey to live here. And frankly it seems a bit silly to have a perfectly good spare bedroom that I don't use." 

Kylo's heart fell again. Then that meant that they'd be something more like college roommates, relegated to their separate bedrooms, and who knew, maybe Hux would start posting up notices in the communal living room area telling him to stop playing music at 10 or not to use all the hot water and other unreasonable things like that. 

At his silence, Hux turned around. 

"For Rey," he clarified. "A good spare bedroom for Rey." A smile flitted around the corners of his mouth. "As for you...the couch should hold you, don't you think?" 

Kylo gawped at him for half a second before smiling back and copping a none-too-surreptitious feel of Hux's bottom as he stepped in to help excavate the onions stuck to the back of the fridge. 

* * *

 

It was well into mid-afternoon and the sun was starting to set when Hux finally deemed that Kylo's apartment might be considered habitable. Of course, there was no fixing the scorched baseboards that looked as though someone had taken an iron to it, and no repairing the hole in Kylo's bedroom wall that looked as though Kylo might have punched through the plaster after getting a bit too passionate over a match of Mario Kart, but it was livable. Hux sighed, a satisfied sort of exhaustion settling into his bones, and plopped himself onto the sofa, whose springs squealed menacingly. 

Rey was wandering around the kitchen and wondering where all her friends had gone. Hux hoped she wasn't talking about the rancid bottles and packets of condiments, because he'd tossed those out ages ago. 

"Huxy? Did you see them?" she wanted to know. "I want to have a tea party." 

"No, I didn't see them, dear," he said, not unkindly, his eyes closed as he leaned his head against the back of the sofa. "Did you check your pockets, maybe?" 

There was a few moments of silence as Rey fiddled with the pockets of her overalls. Then a screech of delight that had Hux smiling despite himself. 

"I found one, Huxy!" Rey announced proudly, running over to him and leaping onto the cushion next to him. The sofa cracked ominously under the new addition, and Hux felt the seats sink a few centimeters lower. Ah, well, he thought to himself, he'd just slap a few bits of tape on it and put it up on Craigslist. Kylo, who was puttering around in the bathroom doing God knew what, surely couldn't object. 

Rey's tiny hand stuffed itself in his face, and Hux cracked open one eye obligingly. 

A giant cockroach, stuffed into a little bit of rag, greeted him, and Hux shot out of his seat, all but vaulting over the edge of the sofa as he tried to put distance between himself and the behemoth. 

"What in God's name is that?!" he screeched, his heart pounding a mile a minute. By God, that thing was huge! It looked like one of the flesh-eating beetles the lab down the hallway from his kept in a tank; it looked like it could star in the next Godzilla movie; it certainly looked as though it could fly. "Oh God, put it outside before it hurts someone!"

Rey looked a little bit hurt. "But he's my friend, Huxy," she started. "Look, he even does tricks!" 

She put the cockroach down on the couch cushion and told it sternly to roll over. Much to Hux's surprise, it didn't skitter away the instant she let go of it. Perhaps it was already dead? he wondered. No, that was quite possibly even worse. 

Rey prodded it to roll over on its back, and Hux breathed a deep sigh of relief. Though they were small, he could distinguish a few upraised digits on the cockroach's abdomen, an indication of a serial number. A toy, then. Nothing but a plastic toy. 

"I...I see," he mumbled, still giving the plastic cockroach a wide berth as he made his way back over to the other side of the couch to plop down again. Kylo was singing in the bathroom. It sounded like a cross between a yowling cat and a Tyrannosaurus rex. Rey scampered off the couch, toy clutched tightly in her fist, and began to poke around at the baseboards, positioning the plastic roach just so. 

"Wait," Hux said, a memory dawning on him as Rey scampered back to the couch and proceeded to screw her face up as though she were trying to cry. "Kylo - I mean, Benny - said you were afraid of cockroaches." 

Rey gaped up at him.

"That's why you were in the Waffle Cafe that morning," Hux recalled, his eyes widening as the full extent of Rey's deceit dawned on him. "But you were faking it, weren't you?" 

Rey looked flabbergasted at how quickly he'd figured it out. The taps were turned off in the bathroom; it appeared that Kylo was nearly finished with whatever business he'd set out to do in there. Quickly, Rey pursed her lips and made a "Shh!" gesture that would have felt much more serious had Hux not been trying desperately hard not to laugh. 

"Alright, I won't tell him," he whispered, allowing Rey to shake his pinky solemnly for a pinky promise, and pasted what he hoped was an appropriately disgusted/frightened look on his face as Kylo exited the bathroom and Rey burst into histrionics. 

* * *

 

Kylo felt his phone vibrate in his pocket as they sat down in a sticky booth at the Waffle Cafe only half an hour later. Despite both his and Hux's best cleaning attempts, a frighteningly large cockroach had somehow managed to escape their clutches. This one had a particularly hard shell, but Kylo managed to vanquish it to the garbage bin with not too much fanfare. He hoped it was the last of them; that one must have been the head cockroach or something. It had looked far larger than any other beast he'd encountered in the apartment during his time there. 

He pulled out his phone surreptitiously while Hux and Rey were initiated in a miniature toothpick duel over who would get to have the last strip of chicken tender in the appetizer plate. He could see Hux relenting playfully out of the corner of his eye as he tapped on his glowing email icon, and he could also see Rey eyeing him suspiciously and giving him what looked like quite a fierce stab to the back of his hand with her toothpick. 

He opened his mouth to scold his cousin when the subject of the new email caught his eye. 

"Re: Rey." 

"Hello Benjamin." This opener was enough to make his nose wrinkle in distaste. He didn't particularly like his given name, but all his relatives refused to use the new moniker he'd distinguished for himself. Something about still being convinced that he would grow out of the "edgy" persona he'd adopted at the tender, misunderstood age of fifteen. 

"We would like to start by thanking you for continuing to watch Rey and take care of her. We are well aware that you are at the age of restlessness" (who said that, Kylo wondered to himself, this wasn't a James Joyce novel) - "and understand that we have asked you to undertake a great burden that perhaps your peers will never experience. We have also recently received an email from someone who claims to be quite fond of you, an instructional lead by the name of Brendon Hux? We are unsure how to respond to this, as he denotes you as Kyle and our daughter as Reg. (Does he know your name is Benjamin?)

Gosh, Kylo grumbled to himself as he scrolled down. His aunt and uncle were certainly long-winded. 

"As your...friend pointed out, the grant for this research study does last for a few years. Rest assured, we have no plans to leave you with Rey for the entire duration." Gee, Kylo thought, rolling his eyes dramatically. That was certainly a confidence booster. He hadn't poisoned Rey or anything yet, after all, and Hux was even managing to get a vegetable into her every now and again. 

"However, we do not have a reasonable settlement suitable for a child of her personality." Kylo privately thought that there were no reasonable settlements suitable for a child of Rey's personality, save for perhaps the most insulated and soundproof bomb shelter under the Pentagon. "As such, we humbly request that you continue to care for her until such a time as arrangements have been found. Your aunt and uncle." 

Huh. Kylo pocketed his phone just as the bored-looking waitress came to drop off their entrees. Hux looked at him over his basket of fish and chips, his eyebrow quirked. "Everything ok?" he asked, watching Rey fondly as she reached over to snag a fry off his plate. 

"Fine," Kylo murmured. "Just got an email from her parents." 

"Oh?" Hux asked. He sounded relaxed, but Kylo could see his grip tighten on the handles of his plastic silverware. Hux was possibly the only person Kylo knew who used a fork and knife to eat food from a red plastic basket. 

"Yeah," Kylo murmured, picking up his burger and frowning as the lettuce, tomatoes, and onion all fell out onto the paper liner. "They basically said they don't know yet when they'll have living arrangements appropriate for her. I guess I can understand that. Australia's full of dangerous things, after all." 

Hux chewed on the edge of a fry. "None more dangerous than her, I'm sure." 

Kylo nearly choked on his burger.

* * *

 

Hux picked his way over the multitude of cardboard boxes that littered his entry hall, a ragged frilled napkin clutched loosely in his hand.

"Here," he said to Rey, once he'd reached the spare bedroom that had become hers all in one fell swoop. The room was already crowded with impossibly tiny clothes and shoes, and Millicent had set up residence on a cushion littered with Rey's jackets. "Your...friend."

"Oh, thank you, Huxy," she squawked up at him, beaming as she snatched the frilly napkin from his clutches. He'd had to pick through the trash can back at Kylo's kitchen, thankfully with some rubber gloves he'd found under the sink, and retrieved the...thing, because Rey's pretend fit looked dangerously on the verge of becoming real. "You are a good person."

"Hm. Yes. Thank you for noticing," Hux agreed, smiling down at her before leaning over to click off the light as she rolled herself into bed. "Good night." 

"Good night, Huxy," she peeped up at him, and Hux was almost at the bedroom door before he heard her mutter a little "I love you." His heart melted, and he nearly turned back to her to pop a kiss on her cheek, but she had already started snoring heartily, and he hardly thought it worth to wake her.


	19. Cabbages

The holiday season was quickly approaching, and Poe rubbed his hands with glee every time he looked over the candy displays. Halloween was coming up, and he already had the perfect costume picked out from the pop-up store down the block from the grocery. It had taken severe threats from Maz, including but not limited to death and unemployment, to convince him not to wear his costume to work. It was a shame, really. Surely nothing was wrong with sexy firefighters. 

He hardly thought Finn would have been opposed. He couldn't quite put his finger on it, but he felt some sort of frisson in the air every time Finn looked over at his register. Granted, he hadn't exactly dared to be so bold again after the near hand-holding incident and the lady with the ranch bottle, but he just chalked it up to nerves concerning the state of the economy. Certainly it couldn't have been him and the swarm of butterflies that had set up residence in his stomach. Certainly not. Poe Dameron was a master extraordinaire of relationships and romantic feelings, and the whole concept of shyness was not something he was familiar with in the least little bit. 

He whistled confidently to himself as he banged on the till to open it. BB8 beeped a good morning greeting up at him. The little orange-and-white bagging droid had been in quite a better mood the past few weeks; apparently the espresso machine in the cafe had been duly impressed by his mechanical prowess with the model freighter construction, and had allowed him back in her good graces. Poe, too, was admittedly quite impressed. BB8 had nothing resembling fingers, and had probably spent several of his break hours trying to stuff peg A into slot B and all that. 

It was dedication that Poe could admire. 

"Yes, good morning to you, too, sir," he sang cheerfully down at the droid as he emptied a paper roll of quarters into the appropriate drawer. "Excited about Halloween?"

BB8 made some sort of noncommittal noise. Poe cheerfully ignored it. How any being with even the slightest thought of sentience could be opposed to Halloween was beyond him, and he merely assumed that BB8 had not yet been exposed to the grandness of the holiday. 

He had just finished putting rolls of shiny new coins and small stacks of crisp bills into his till, whistling the whole while, when the automatic doors at the front of the shop slid open. He looked up, blinking hopefully against the bright rays of sunlight that accompanied the new arrival's entrance. Perhaps it was Finn, his heart thought wistfully. It would certainly be a fitting, positively heavenly entry for such an angelic being. 

Unfortunately the rays faded away and left Poe with dark spots floating around his vision and the frighteningly long silhouette of none other than Kylo Ren darkening the freshly mopped linoleum. Was Poe disappointed? Yes, quite a bit, actually, but he was cheered up at the thought that Rey might have some fresh gossip to get the gossip mill turning. 

To his horror, once the dark spots had cleared, he saw Kylo dragging a cart from the pile by the door. There was no little girl in sight, no matter how hard Poe craned his neck to see behind the candy display. This was truly a tragedy, and Poe sighed heavily, flopping back down grumpily behind his register and wondering what he had done to deserve such a dismal morning. Perhaps he deserved it, he wondered. He definitely hadn't sorted through his garbage for recyclable items, and he could almost feel the workers down at the landfill shaking tiny, grubby fists at him as they looked disparagingly over his Hefty brand bags. 

Kylo finished his shopping in ample time, aided with what looked like a rather long and detailed paper list covered in what Poe recognized as Hux's neat block writing. At the register, the man hesitated for a moment, lingering over the Mars Bars. 

"I won't tell if you won't," Poe offered, trying his best to be helpful. Kylo glared ferociously at him, and BB8 quivered behind Poe's knee at the immediate threat of annihilation. After a few long moments of silence during which Poe occupied himself with wondering if Finn would attend his funeral and what sort of flower he might wear in his buttonhole, Kylo grabbed a few bags of candy and slapped them down on the conveyor belt. They looked grossly out of place between the heads of two red cabbages and some bottles of fruit and mint infused water. 

"Organic, I see," Poe trilled as he shoved the cabbages in BB8's general direction. "Shelling out the big bucks to impress the boyfriend, I see?"

Kylo grunted. Poe could relate. 

"And how's the little miss?" Poe wanted to know, determined to at least get a nugget of gossip out of the man. "Doing well? How's the situation with her parents?" 

Kylo grunted again. Poe frowned, even as he relished the challenges Kylo presented. He'd never met such a stubborn, untalkative individual, though that was perhaps with the exception of Agatha, an old lady who came in on Sundays and didn't say a word except to viciously accuse him of increasing the price on her pot roast from the deli. 

"Right, then," he said carefully, turning the card reader towards Kylo so he could pay and sign. "Glad to see things are going okay, then."

Kylo muttered something Poe couldn't quite hear. Something about coffee? Perhaps that was it. Kylo must have been some sort of caffeine vampire that couldn't possibly bear to exist without at least a good carafe and a half of espresso filtering through his veins. 

Kylo was fumbling in his pockets and searching for his wallet for such a long time that Poe was considering just letting him go with a store tab when It Happened. 

Kylo's key ring clattered onto the counter along with an old movie stub, a crumpled stick of bubblegum, and a lint ball that was roughly the size of a dwarf planet. Most of the keys were old and battered, rusty-looking, save for one. No. That one was sharp and shiny and silver, all of its teeth present and accounted for, and Poe's sharp, well-educated mind deduced that it could only have meant one thing. 

But certainly clarification wasn't a bad thing. 

"Is your billing information on your card correct?" he asked, after Kylo had swiped. "You know, the billing address and everything? We've been having a recent string of credit card fraud lately." 

"Yes," Kylo barked, scrabbling for the pen that came with the card reader. Unbeknownst to him, Poe was pinching one of the coils under the counter, out of line of sight, so that the pen tip fell just short of the screen. 

"Are you sure?" he inquired. 

"Well," Kylo muttered, still grappling with the pen, "I moved recently, but I'll get around to updating it." 

"Ah. I see," Poe replied calmly, though of course he wasn't calm at all. In fact, he could hardly wait for Kylo to make his departure so that he could scream his vicarious delight. "You take care now," he peeped cheerily as Kylo grabbed the veritable bushels of vegetables and fled into the parking lot. Poe didn't even wait until the squealing of Kylo's tires had faded from earshot before breaking into a victorious cancan in his little checkout cube and receiving a hard jab from BB8 for his troubles. 

* * *

 

Finn hid behind the candy display and tried to hold back his laughter. He'd slipped into the store's back entrance a few minutes ago in the hopes that he might be able to pop a little pumpkin-shaped Halloween chocolate onto Poe's register without him noticing. It seemed the type of thing that Poe would enjoy. 

Unfortunately his plans had been daunted by a certain Kylo Ren, so he slipped the chocolate back into the outer pocket of the coat Poe had left for him ages ago which he still cherished and washed lovingly. There would come other moments to give him the chocolate, he was sure, and thought dreamily about how Poe might smile and dance with glee. 

* * *

 

"Thanks very much," Hux said, smiling and popping a kiss on Kylo's upturned cheek as he grabbed the bags of groceries off the table where Kylo had set them, with only a small shudder as he noted the plastic bags instead of the ecofriendly reusable ones he was sure were languishing in the footwell of Kylo's car even as they spoke. He rummaged through the bags, arranging the vegetables in the crisper and turning all the labels of the condiments right side out in their rack. 

Kylo grunted something that Hux took to be a "No problem," and busied himself with pouring a tall mug of steaming coffee from Hux's brewer. 

He'd asked Kylo specifically to run out for groceries early that Sunday morning because he knew exactly just how long the lines at Maz's could get after Mass, and Hux had been fixing to make something nice in his slow cooker for dinner that night. The pair of them (plus Rey) had fallen into a neat little semblance of domesticity, and it made his heart flutter every time he looked down fondly at Kylo's beat up trainers threatening to stain his pristine baseboards. 

"Huxy!" Rey roared from her bedroom. The beast had been awakened by the crinkling of plastic bags, and little stomps shook the crystals of the small faux chandelier Hux and Kylo had purchased at a flea market a few weeks ago. Clearly she was expecting something along the lines of a McMuffin or something of the sort, but her devious plans of consuming as much junk food as humanly possible would be foiled yet again, Hux thought triumphantly. There were plans of a nice oatmeal with a bruleed top in her future, though she didn't know it yet. 

Halloween and all those other holidays were coming up, and Hux was somewhat excited for them. It would be the first time in a few years that he and Millicent would have someone other than his mother and her new husband to spend them with. His father did not celebrate the holidays, and had taken great pains to drive that particular point home; he'd once left Hux a rather lengthy and verbose message about how holidays were the hell spawn of corporate America and were just a ploy for advertising companies to learn more about one's spending habits. What with the whole debacle about the NSA, Hux was perhaps starting to think that his father might have been only a little bit ahead of the curve. 

Perhaps he could convince Kylo to come and meet his mother? He could only imagine his mother's horrified look when she caught Rey gnawing frantically on the turkey drumstick before the bird had even reached the table, and had to stifle a laugh. 

Or what if Kylo wanted him to meet his parents? Surely Rey's aunt and uncle would be eager to see her, make sure that she hadn't contracted scurvy or anything of the sort. Then again, Kylo had mentioned something about not getting on too well with his father, so perhaps...Hm. 

Hux sifted some sugar through a sieve into a blue china bowl thoughtfully. Perhaps it could just be the three of them (four, if you counted Millicent) for the holidays. They could make their own Christmas cards - he had the perfect little elf costume for Millicent - and take Rey to see the Santa at the mall. They could go skating on the outdoor rink, and drink eggnog lattes and peppermint hot chocolates at the Starbucks on the corner of the university while watching students stress out over finals and projects. This last one was a particular favorite pastime of Hux's; it really got him into the holiday spirit. 

"What are you thinking about, babe?" Kylo wanted to know. Hux became very aware that he'd been sifting empty air for probably a good few minutes. 

"Nothing, nothing," he hastened to say, trying and failing to keep himself from blushing furiously. He kept waiting and waiting for the newly lovestruck feeling to go away, but he still found it in quite alive and well during the early mornings. And the early afternoons. And the late nights. And all the time, really. 

"You were thinking about me naked, weren't you?" Kylo asked, smirking and striking a pose so ridiculous and with such vigor that he nearly knocked his cup off the table. 

"No," Hux laughed, though he certainly now was. 

"Don't be nasty!" Rey shrieked as she pounded down the stairs, Millicent hanging around her shoulders like a very disgruntled scarf. She had a pink bow affixed to her fur that Hux sorely hoped hadn't been glued on. "Breakfast, please!" 

"Right, breakfast," Hux agreed, grinning as Millicent leaped nimbly down from her perch on Rey's shoulders and proceeded to curl herself around his ankles. "Be patient and sit next to your cousin, won't you?" 

Rey complied, though not too eagerly, and Hux turned back to his stove and allowed himself to think soft holiday thoughts again as Kylo and Rey argued vigorously over the proper way to open a mandarin orange.

* * *

 

There was a lull in customers sometime around one thirty PM, and Poe scampered off the register for his coveted break. He purchased a coffee and sandwich from the in-store cafe, turned a judicious eye away from BB8's flirting with the espresso machine, and plopped himself into an iron wrought chair with a sigh of relief, closing his eyes. 

The morning rush had been relentless. There had nearly been a fistfight over the limited edition Kinder eggs, and Poe had only just barely managed to escape unscathed. It had been quite a stressful few hours. 

There was a scraping sound as someone dragged another chair over to his table. Poe frowned, cracking open an eye in irritation. He would have thought it obvious enough that he was on his lunch break, but some customers were incorrigible. 

"Mind if I sit here?" 

His eyes snapped open fully. Those were the dulcet tones of Finn, the dairy stocker, and he looked up to find the man himself, beaming down at him. Of course, this could have just been the afternoon sunlight shining in through the windows, but Poe preferred to think otherwise. He'd always been a romantic. 

"Oh, no, of course not," he babbled, hastening to move his coffee and sandwich so Finn could sit and place his own coffee on the table. He could see from the almost illegible marker scribble on the side of the paper cup that Finn had ordered...a caramel latte? A cabbage espresso? He had no idea, really, but the first word looked vaguely that it started with a C. Maybe an O. Possibly a Q. "Make yourself at home." 

"Thanks," Finn replied, grinning. Poe tried very hard not to swoon. "Crazy morning, huh?"

"Yeah," Poe agreed, his cheekbones starting to hurt from smiling so hard. This felt like a scene straight out of 500 Days of Summer, or something of that caliber. "But we got through it."

"So we did." Finn took a thoughtful sip of his coffee. "So we did."

"So..." Poe said after a long moment during which he wondered if it might be too forward to ask if Finn wanted to go on a date. "Um, do you have any Halloween plans?" He wanted to kick himself in the mouth right after asking it. Surely someone as gorgeous and lovely and talented as Finn would have plans until the next decade, and it had been a rather basic question anyway. It might have been asked at an office potluck between two coworkers who would rather have had nothing to do with each other, and Poe miserably thought that perhaps he had ruined his chances with Finn. 

"No, actually," Finn answered, and Poe's heart skipped a beat. "Do you?"

"No," Poe murmured, gawping. "I mean, I was probably going to go to a Halloween party down by the river. You know, lots of chocolate and stuff." There was no such thing as a Halloween party down by the river, but he'd panicked and made up something to try and sound cool. It was a rookie mistake, because now surely Finn would ask if maybe he could tag along and Poe would have to lean heavily on Facebook friends he hadn't spoken to in veritable centuries (see: since high school) to create just such an occasion, and those people already probably had plans and - 

"Oh, right," Finn said, his tone a bit teasing, but Poe couldn't be sure. Finn seemed to be unbound by whatever rules of convention existed, and Poe couldn't get an accurate read on him. "And I remember how you love chocolate. Right?"

"Right." Poe was sure his face was on fire. "Love it." 

"Great!" Finn announced, smiling not unkindly as he reached into the pocket of his smock and pulled out a brightly wrapped chocolate in the shape of a pumpkin, which he plopped down on the table and pushed over to Poe. "I had an extra one, and thought you might like it."

"Oh," Poe murmured, sure he'd died and gone directly to Heaven, collecting $200 on the way. "Thank you, I really appreciate it." 

There was another moment of silence. Finn fidgeted. Poe fidgeted. BB8 beeped in the distance. 

"Do you want to -" Poe began. 

"Do you think maybe you would -" Finn said at the same moment. 

An awkward pause, during which Poe laughed nervously; it came out as more of a cackle, and he could only hope that Finn would just take it as part of his holiday festivity. 

"You first," Poe said, blushing like an eager maiden (at least, in his imagination. To any passersby, he looked like he was competing for a blue ribbon in the Tomato Growers' stall at a county fair). 

"Right," Finn said, smiling. "I was just wondering if your invitation to this party thing by the river was a hard one, or if maybe you could show me around or something? I just moved here not too long ago, and I thought maybe if it wasn't too much trouble?"

"No trouble, no trouble!" Poe squawked, nearly spilling his coffee in his excitement. "I'd love to, and I'm sure my friends would understand and all." 

"Oh, that's great!" Finn replied, sounding relieved. "That's really great. Here, if I could just get your number?" He pulled his phone out of his smock pocket and looked up at Poe expectantly. Poe could hardly spit out his number quickly enough, and he just about died when the resounding ping beeped on his own phone with Finn's text message. 

Things were starting to look up for him, and the thoughts of Kylo Ren's new silver key were pushed to the back of his mind as he tried not to grin too wildly. 


	20. Candy

Hux normally did not approve of Halloween. The very idea was revolting. A holiday evening specifically designed to let loose the hooligans and delinquents of the neighborhood to roam around and screech at young impressionable children. That, and the candy. Hux would have understood if the holiday traditions itself were solely designed to net dentists more money to pay off their towering student loans, but that appeared not to be the case. 

He shuddered as he took a sip of Syrah and rummaged through the candy bowl he'd reluctantly put together for a miniature peanut butter cup. He had always been a soft one when it came to dark chocolate and peanut butter. 

Kylo and Rey, complete with puppy dog eyes from the latter and a hideous grimace halfway between pain and despair on the former, had...ah, coerced him into participation this particular year. He had only grudgingly accepted after Kylo had begged him and bribed him with the promises of perhaps more than a few sexual favors, and the headband of fluffy black cat ears sat on top of his head, almost mocking. 

His father would probably have a conniption if he'd been able to see Hux at that moment. He'd go caterwauling on about how no self-respecting person would allow themselves to be seen like that, especially in public, and how it was a disgrace to him personally, as Hux also bore his name. 

Huh. Caterwauling. Hux didn't know if it was the Syrah or just the sheer ridiculousness of the situation, but he'd made a pun seemingly without intending to, and not a particularly good one at that. 

"Huxy!" Rey screeched from her small bedroom. "Did you put on your face?!" 

Hux wrinkled his nose in disgust. He'd been trying to forget about that particular detail. 

Rey had, of course, insisted he do the whole shebang, and, no doubt aided and abetted by her equally as devious cousin, a small makeup kit with detailed instructions on how to create cute feline face paint had appeared in his bathroom next to his toothbrush. His concession to that was to daub the tip of his nose sparingly with the black powder provided and draw some halfhearted attempts at faint whiskers on his cheeks. 

He contemplated the rim of his wineglass. A small pink lipstick stain adorned the lip. Ah, yes. That too. It had felt oddly thrilling, slicking his mouth with gloss and tasting the slight wax flavor afterwards. Strangely taboo, strangely addictive. Hux hoped he wouldn't make a habit of it; Kylo would be insatiable and he was quite aware that cosmetic products did not exactly err on the side of a reasonable budget. 

"I did," he called back, when Rey's whale calls seemed to be on the verge of getting more distressed. "Calm down, please, or I might not take you trick or treating." 

Rey gasped, scandalized at the threat, but piped down anyway. Hux settled back into his couch cushions, smiling to himself and pouring another generous slosh of wine. Kylo was in the bathroom, helping stuff her into a witch outfit, and Hux had nearly laughed himself sick at the image of Kylo in his Gandalf-esque robes that looked as though they'd gone straight through a dumpster or three. Probably had been picked up at the local thrift store, but Hux wasn't one to judge. He was all for bolstering the local economy, after all. 

It was disgustingly cute, the three of them. A wizard and his family. Hux vaguely wondered why he was being relegated to the role of household pet when they had a perfectly good cat that was currently shedding fur all over his cushions, but he was in far too nice of a wine sodden mood to say anything about it. He just fervently hoped Kylo wouldn't get the idea that Hux would be all up for trussing himself up like a holiday ham on Christmas and going caroling. Absolutely not. 

Kylo emerged from the bathroom, looking rather dingy and scruffy and brandishing a staff he'd fashioned himself out of cardboard tubes. Rey tottered along beside him, her tattered black robe dragging on the floor and her pointy hat falling over her eyes. She was carrying a pillowcase she'd pilfered from one of Hux's good throw pillows, and normally Hux would have demanded she take something else, like an eco-friendly reusable shopping bag, but the wine was really working wonders on his mood that night. 

"Well, Huxy?" Kylo asked, trying hard and failing not to smirk. He spread his arms, the long sleeves of his robes nearly smacking Rey straight in the face. "Do you like it?" 

"Sure," Hux snorted, rolling his eyes and taking another sip of wine. "Love it."

* * *

 

Though he certainly wasn't shy and had no reservations about appearing silly or anything less than professional, Poe felt distinctly out of his element in the firefighter outfit he'd picked up from the costume store down the block. The hems of the booty shorts dug into the backs of his thighs, and the knee high boots were rubbing a bit of a blister into the side of his left foot. 

But it was worth it, he determined, to lead Finn around the city and show him all the nice bars and the not so nice ones, in perhaps the hopes that Finn would not be averse to one day getting up to a bit of delinquency. 

Finn had dressed as a vampire, with a horrible plastic set of fanged dentures that had probably been on the discount rack at a party supply store. Well, that was fine, Poe reasoned to himself as he showed Finn around the distilleries by the river and invited him inside for the annual Halloween brewers' apple bobbing. Finn agreed enthusiastically, beaming in all his fanged glory, and Poe felt his heart skip a few beats. 

He hoped it wasn't the signs of some onset cardiac palpitation-related disease. He was far too young - and handsome - to be so compromised, and as he watched Finn enthusiastically bobbing for apples, hoped that the other man would agree the same.

* * *

 

Hux thought perhaps he might have to revise his idea of Halloween. It wasn't entirely terrible, after all; Rey had only terrorized half his neighborhood in her vigorous quest for sweets. Hux thought that perhaps housing associations had been developed for just such eventualities as her, and he was quite glad to know that the $450 that went towards the homeowners' association each month wasn't being put to waste. 

But. Ah. There were more preoccupying matters at hand. Kylo was sucking a bruise into his neck that he was sure was going to be quite red in the morning, and he'd pinned Hux up against the doorway. His robes were everywhere, some sort of synthetic polyester mix that Hux's delicate skin took personal offense at, but he could hardly think properly at the moment. Kylo's hand had inserted itself rather presumptuously into Hux's leggings and was cupping Hux's cock in a rather distracting manner. Rey had been shut up in her bedroom ages ago, Hux having extracted a stern promise from her that she would not consume anything greater or equal to half her spoils, but he swore she'd had her fingers crossed behind her back. 

"Stop thinking," Kylo ordered him strictly. "You're a very bad kitty."

Hux opened his mouth to protest. He was nothing of the sort, and was quite sure Millicent would agree. His fluffy headband had gone lopsided, and Kylo reached up to arrange it back into position. 

Kylo tasted like chocolates. Hux liked that very much. 

His doorbell bing-bonged, rather aggressively. Hux didn't like that one bit. 

With soft promises to his somewhat jilted boyfriend (the word still sent a shimmer of tingles down Hux's spine), he darted to the door and peered through the peephole. A man in a brown postal uniform was standing outside, clutching a manila envelope and looking distinctly bored. 

Hux drew back the chain a small bit and cracked open the door. "We're all out of candy, I'm afraid," he began, but the man frowned and thrust the envelope at him. 

"Delivery for a Benjamin Solo," he droned in a monotone that would have sent Hux's esteemed father rolling into an early grave from not being given the respect he accorded. "Postmarked urgent from Australia."

"Australia?" This made Hux even more suspicious. Certainly nothing good could have come out of that country, where 1 in 5 spiders were venomous and 1 in 3 children were certainly feral. "From whom?"

The postman shrugged, tried to shove a clipboard through the small crack of doorway Hux had allowed him. "Please sign for receipt of package delivery." 

Hux scribbled a hasty signature on it before thrusting the clipboard back at him. 

"Nice costume, by the way," the man quipped at him, and before Hux could even work up a good fit of rage, he had darted down the hallway and disappeared into the night. This was ridiculous, truly. Mail wasn't delivered on Sundays, and today was a fine Sunday like no other. 

"Who's it from, then?" Kylo asked. He had taken the liberty of lounging on Hux's nice furniture in his filthy robes, but Hux was too consumed with curiosity - and, possibly, fear - over what could be inside the envelope to badger him about it. "Looks foreign. Lots of stamps on it."

There were indeed quite a lot of stamps. Hux wondered if that was normal. 

He handed it to Kylo, who frowned at the name on the label but ripped it open with zest anyway. Hux probably would have exercised a bit more caution, would perhaps have gone for the letter opener in his kitchen drawer just in case the contents of the envelope were delicate, but Kylo appeared to have no such reservations. It was one of the things he loved about him, he supposed, his complete and utter willingness to subject himself haplessly to the possible threat of an anthrax-based mail bomb. 

A sheaf of papers was dislodged from the envelope. Kylo picked them up, his eyes scanning the headers. He grunted every now and again, and Hux was patently unsure as to what that meant. 

"Well?" he asked, when his curiosity was too severe to ignore and the threat of biochemical weapons enclosed in the letters had all but dissipated. "What is it?" 

"They want us to come visit them soon," Kylo muttered, setting the papers down and leaning back against the sofa with a contemplative look on his face. Hux had the feeling that this was a Rather Serious Moment, but the effect was ruined by the chocolate smudge Kylo had on the corner of his mouth and the scruffy wizarding robes he was still wearing. "Rey's parents. In Australia. They were saying something about finding some temporary accommodations that would probably suit her well, close to a good school, suburban area, not too close to any of the local wildlife though I'm not too sure how they could say that, it's Australia and all..." Kylo trailed off. 

Hux gawped at him. This information had certainly put a small but significant damper on his arousal levels. 

"Wait," he began, plopping down on the couch next to Kylo and staring at the packet of papers. "You mean to say...they want us to drop her off, or something?"

"Or something," Kylo agreed, sighing and letting his head tip back against the couch cushions. A bubble pipe or a few multicolored smoke rings would not have looked amiss. 

"Huh." Hux had known that the day would come when he'd have to say goodbye to Rey for perhaps a long time, had known that of course her parents would have wanted her back after they were all settled in and doing their research on the coral reefs or whatnot. Still, she had grown on him, and she'd certainly grown on Millicent like an overly persistent yet adoring tick. 

The house would be far too quiet without her. 

"Well," he began, in a tone of forced cheer. "When are we going?"


	21. Whiskey

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's been a while! I've been busy with grad school interviews, and I've been accepted into the program I really wanted to go to :)

It was not exactly normal for one's teaching assistant slash lab instructor to bring his...partner? perhaps? to the lab final. The students looked up nervously from the frantic scritch-scratch of their gnawed-on pencils on their ragged scantrons to glance at the tall, scruffy man lounging in their TA's ergonomic chair, bouncing a rather cute but eccentrically-dressed child in his lap. The springs on the ergonomic chair were squealing, and it was particularly distracting, especially for those poor students whose nerves were already on edge from watching their TA skulking violently around the lab and glaring over their shoulders. 

"Eyes on your paper, Simmons!" Hux roared only a moment later. A junior at the end of a lab bench nearly fell over. Rey giggled and clapped her hands in delight at the spectacle. 

"S-sorry, H-H-Hux," he whimpered, in sheer terror. His surname was actually Timmons, but far be it from him to correct the rampaging dragon. He hadn't been looking at his neighbor's paper or anything, but had instead been gawping at a particularly fat squirrel lounging on the branch of a tree outside. Most TAs that Simmons had had during his university career had encouraged him to call them by their first names, sometimes even a simple Bro or nod would suffice, but Hux had that eerie aura about him that encouraged no such familiarities. Timmons had caught himself about to say Sir on multiple occasions, but several of his more clandestine adventures into the pornographic area of interests subconsciously warned him that this could, in no way, lead to anything good. 

"And you, Frederick!" Hux snapped, whirling around on an unsuspecting senior who had been examining a particularly worrisome freckle on his wrist. "Suspecting melanoma, are you?"

"No, Hux, I was just -" Frederick began, but Hux was having none of it. He was in his absolute element. 

"Shall I write you a note to the nurse?" he asked, silkily, and Frederick shuddered in terror. He, along with his classmates, knew quite well that a dismissal from class at this stage in the game would surely mean a failure in the course itself. Hux was notorious for not offering any makeup exams, unless the absentee in question was quite literally on their deathbed. 

"No, no," Frederick hastened to say, bending over his paper and making himself quite liberally the very picture of perfect studiousness. "I'm sure the would-be cancer can wait." It was a snip that he would not have taken had he not been currently running on two hours of sleep and a questionable amount of edibles, and, as it would turn out later, the supposed freckle on his wrist was nothing more but a smudge of chocolate icing.

* * *

 

Hux was clearly the king of this particular domain, and Kylo shrank back into the proclaimed ergonomic chair in fear as Hux passed by, all but looking ready to breathe fire at the nearest provocation. Rey seemed to have no such qualms, and roared with laughter as Hux took another unsuspecting student to task for drumming his fingers on the bench top in what looked like abject despair. She clearly found it good sport, and Kylo was hard pressed to keep her from leaning forward from her perch on his knees and smacking the nearest exam-taker with a ruler she'd pilfered from the jar of supposed contraband on Hux's desk. 

Of course, he'd suspected, had perhaps known in some deep subconscious part of himself, that Hux was quite the stickler for knowledge and academic integrity at large, but Kylo hadn't quite expected Hux's passion to be quite this severe. Perhaps that was just one of the more drastic side effects of the rose-colored glasses he seemed to be afflicted with. 

As such, Kylo was quite glad he was not a student in one of Hux's sections, and he allowed his mind to wander to the holiday proceedings he'd put in place for that evening. The turkey had been thoroughly dressed and basted and popped in the oven - and what a funny word that was, he mused, basting, to describe such a violent process. Hux had assured him that he'd basted turkeys before, and, upon glimpsing the nearly fanatical way Hux had been wielding the baster, Kylo had been quick to agree. 

There would be potatoes to peel and mash, and bottles of sparkling cider and wine to uncork, and a pumpkin puree mixture Kylo had pulled off the internet to pour into a store-bought pie crust and definitely not into the yawning maw of Rey's mouth. He could only shudder at the idea of what his aunt and uncle might say upon discovering he had returned their daughter all riddled with cavities.

Hux roared at Simmons again, and the poor boy looked like he was about to burst into tears. Kylo opened his mouth to say something, to try and do his neighborly duty, but a glance at Hux informed Kylo that Hux was clearly enjoying himself. 

Well, then. He closed his mouth, slowly. Simmons looked utterly miserable. Abject. 

Kylo could only wing a silent prayer to whatever deities might be presiding over the biology labs that the curve was generous.

* * *

 

"Ah, Mr. Timmons, is it?" Poe asked a few hours later, squinting at the ID the student had pushed quickly across the laminate counter to him. It was a very obvious fake, and quite a bad one at that; Poe was no geography buff, but he was quite sure he would not be able to accept a driver's license issued by the DMV in "XZ," wherever that was. 

"Yeah, Timmons," the student mumbled, frowning very hard at the counter. He looked rather distraught, and his eyes looked a fair bit bloodshot. In fact, if Poe had been hard pressed to comment on the boy's appearance, he would have hazarded a guess - and been quite correct - that the poor student had spent some time locked in a bathroom stall sobbing about the injustice of the world and making cryptic 140-character posts on social media. 

Poe looked from the frighteningly large bottle of whiskey to the credit card and driver's license in front of him. 

"And, er, what year did you say you were in school?" Poe asked, quietly nudging the cards back over to Timmons, who took them and shoved them back into his battered wallet without comment. 

"I'm a junior," Timmons muttered, chewing at his lower lip. "In university."

"Oh." The knot in Poe's chest relaxed a little; he felt much less guilty after that admission. Surely some juniors were already of legal age, he reasoned to himself as he rang the whiskey through over BB8's admonishing, scandalized beeps, and surely Timmons was in dire need of forgetting something. Perhaps a girlfriend had broken up with him; perhaps he'd found out that he'd been the victim of the university's strict parking department officials yet again. He bagged up the whiskey discreetly in paper bags, and Timmons gave him a small, almost pathetic smile of gratitude. 

Whatever it was, Poe was sure, was rather severe.

"That was a violation of the employee handbook, Section 14B, or whatever, you know," a teasing voice scolded him gently, and Poe's cheeks flamed with embarrassment. Despite the fact that he was, in all other respects, a law-abiding citizen, this embarrassment had nothing to do with being caught distributing alcohol to potential minors; rather, Poe was a bit ashamed that an infatuation of his had discovered a weakness in him. A flaw. A chink in the proverbial armor. 

Much to his surprise, when he gathered the courage to look up from the innocuous bag of sea salt chips on the conveyor belt, he found Finn's eyes were sparkling at him. 

"Well," he said, trying and failing to regain his composure. "The poor boy definitely needed something. He looked like he had a lot on his mind."

"That he did," Finn agreed. "I won't tell if you won't," he added, shortly before becoming utterly bewitched by the sheer gratitude in the cashier's eyes and neglecting to mention the fact that Poe had mistakenly swiped his bag of chips across the scanner three times.

* * *

 

"The house isn't on fire," Hux remarked, dryly, as he pushed open the door to their flat. Dusk had already fallen, and his messenger bag was satisfying weighted down with the heft of several tear-stained exams. It even looked as though Simmons hadn't finished the back of two whole pages, and Hux was already preparing himself mentally for a long, cheerful night filled with dark chocolate, red wine, and red pens fresh from the box. 

"That's a start, isn't it?" Kylo asked, nearly tripping over Rey as she pushed past his knee and flung her shoes against the baseboard. Hux sniffed in disapproval, but only toed her shoes into a neat line precisely one inch from the wood. It had become something of a routine. 

"It even smells palatable," Hux added, not unkindly. It did smell quite nice, and he could already tell Millicent would be pouncing on the nearest target (see: probably Rey) in hopes for scraps. "Which is more than I can say for some of the things I've seen you eat." 

"Yeah, yeah, love you, too," Kylo grumbled behind him, struggling to pull off his jacket and scarf, which had somehow gotten tangled. Hux's heart skipped a beat, and warm bubbles flickered through his chest. This was absurd, really. He'd have to visit a doctor, see if perhaps he wasn't suffering from heartburn or indigestion or something of the sort. He'd probably convince (bribe) Rey to the doctor's with him, too, get her a physical and whatever potential vaccinations (see: possibly the lot) for their upcoming trip in only a few short weeks. 

His thoughts drifted to the flight as he marched into the kitchen, pulled Rey away from the oven, and pulled the turkey out, releasing a fragrant cloud of steam that sent Millicent and his vegan next-door neighbors into hysterics for much different reasons. Hux didn't exactly relish the idea of a sixteen-hour flight, but Kylo had assured him that he'd done some research on the airline his aunt and uncle had booked tickets for, had assured him that he wouldn't be stuck sitting next to some stranger who would sweat all over his thigh. There was even a rather good selection of in-flight movies, Kylo had pointed out during a vigorous bout of sex that left Hux rather boneless. And meal service that didn't appear to be half terrible. 

Given the enthusiastic way Kylo had been plowing into him at the time, Hux was surprised Kylo hadn't somehow managed to convince him to donate half his net worth to a prince in Nigeria. 

He carved the turkey as he wondered what to pack for Australia. It was supposed to be hot this time of year, and that probably meant the marsupials and jellyfish and spiders as big as one's leg would be out in full force. What did one bring, exactly, to increase one's chances of survival? A tranquilizer gun and darts? That seemed to be out of the question, due to the pesky issue of airline security. 

Rey was frothing at his elbow. Hux placated her with a bit of the turkey skin, and Millicent nipped sharply at his ankles in dismay at the unfair treatment. 

And the sun, too, he thought with a frown. Kylo was keeping up a rather vulgar running commentary at his side as he mashed the potatoes with a zeal that would have Hux finding bits of boiled tuber pasted to his walls for weeks. He hardly thought a travel-sized bottle of sunscreen would be enough to keep him from burning hideously. He'd go all red, and then molt like a rather irritable lobster, and surely that could hardly be attractive.

* * *

 

"Could you stop thinking for half a second?" Kylo wanted to know as they sat down around the table. Millicent was clawing at Kylo's thigh, playing the part of the beggar quite convincingly, but Hux had warned Kylo to have a steadfast will. "I know the tests in your bag are probably turning you on something fierce, but it's Thanksgiving dinner and that would just be bad manners."

Hux gawped across the table at him. He'd been so caught up in the logistics of the trip that he hadn't thought about the exams. 

Kylo leaned back in his chair, smiling in apparent satisfaction as he forked a few pieces of turkey onto their plates. "What are you thankful for, then?" he wanted to know as he stuffed a bite of bird into his mouth. It was quite dry, but he supposed that was just the way all turkeys were. 

"Thankful for friends!" Rey shrieked, her eyes fixed on a small bit of frilly napkin next to her plate. The wax candles stuck into the necks of empty wine bottles flickered charmingly over it, and Kylo fervently hoped that he would be able to convince her to part with her imaginary napkin friend before her parents banished it to the attic or the fireplace or something of the sort. 

"That's good," Kylo conceded, "and what -"

"Thankful for Millie!" Rey continued, dropping from her chair to fling her arms around Millicent's neck. Millicent licked at her face in what looked like a gesture of affection, and stalked away upon discovering that there were no stray bits of turkey to be had. Rey returned to her perch on her chair and shoveled down a great quantity of mashed potatoes that Kylo was impressed by. 

"Thankful for Huxy and Benny, too," she added, now starting in on a roll with vigor. Crumbs scattered across Hux's floor, and Kylo could almost feel the other man wince. He quickly plied him with more wine. "And that's it." 

"That's it, hm?" Kylo repeated, wondering why he'd been relegated to the very end of the short prayer. "Well, that's pretty alright, then." 

It was a quiet Thanksgiving, peaceful, cheerful, even, but both Hux's and Kylo's minds were preoccupied with the unsettling thought that this might be the last time, for a long time, that the table was full. 


	22. Muffins

Hux was not angry. Oh, no. That was far too gentle a word, and Kylo feared for his life as he watched the other man rampaging around the laboratory. He was only grateful that a thick, seemingly bulletproof door, complete with bulletproof glass window, separated him and Rey from the stampeding monster. Of course, it was getting quite chilly in the lab's walk-in freezer - he'd dragged Rey in there earlier under the pretense of possibly cooling off a bit from the stifling December air - but that was far beyond the point. In fact, he felt rather Jurassic Park-esque, and was looking around for possible ladles to bang on the floor (lots, for some reason) and small cabinets to hide in (none whatsoever) when Hux's shrill voice threatened to pierce through his eardrums. 

"This. Is. Unacceptable!" Rey roared beside him, making Kylo jump and bang his forehead on a hanging shelf. Not half a second later, Hux shrieked the exact same thing. Kylo sorely hoped that she wouldn't repeat the spectacle in front of her parents; he could hardly imagine them being too pleased. 

"Disastrous!" Hux continued, his tirade looking far from over. Undergraduates fled from his warpath through the laboratory, and Kylo was sure the Roseobacter, sitting ducks in their petri dishes, were cursing the day they'd been brought into existence. "I leave the lab in your seemingly capable hands for one point five weeks, and I come back to shenanigans! Cross-contamination! Improper waste disposal! Smudges on the brand new glassware!" Hux's voice reached breaking point at this last, and apparently largest, injustice, and Kylo was half-wondering when the new glasses would shatter. The undergraduates he was berating looked dutifully ashamed; one looked nearly on the verge of tears. 

Kylo couldn't quite make out said undergraduate's face, but he fervently winged a prayer to heaven that it wasn't the unfortunate Simmons. The poor chap had been through quite a lot recently. 

"And you think," Hux was starting to laugh the laugh of the possessed, "you think that you can take care of my cat?!" 

Oh. Really? Kylo burst out laughing, and Rey chortled heartily at his elbow without having any idea what was going on. That's what this whole debacle was about? 

He should have known, if he was being frank. Hux had been in a mood of sorts upon discovering that the tickets Kylo's aunt and uncle had purchased for them were for an airline that was pet-friendly only to specific destinations, Australia not included. Granted, Kylo had somehow managed to parlay that anger into what had been quite possibly the best sex of his life, resplendent with shallow scratches on his back that still stung something fierce when he stepped into the shower. 

Hux's rant showed no signs of being over any time soon, and, with a nod to the fact that he had started to lose feeling in his extremities (Rey was patently unaffected), Kylo sighed and pushed open the door to the freezer a crack, then two, hoping that whatever undergrad had been assigned to its care that the hinges were oiled well. They had been, and the door didn't even creak in the slightest as Kylo and Rey slipped out of the freezer and all but sprinted down the hall out of Hux's line of fire. 

Kylo figured, even as he was frantically pressing the elevator button, that he'd just send Hux a text from one of the cafes on campus after they'd already secured seats there. He'd buy him a non-fat, no-whip, almond milk chai latte and a chocolate chunk muffin, Rey would scarf down all the cake pop samples she would wheedle out of the unsuspecting student baristas, and he'd jot down a few novel ideas in his little black pocket notebook while waiting for the veritable tornado of rage to dissipate. 

That was, after all, the best plan. He pulled the panels of his coat closer together as he stuffed Rey and himself into the crowded elevator, pleasantly ignoring the pointed glares and mutters of his fellow carriagemates. 

He'd always been a fan of self-preservation, after all.

* * *

 

"Unbelievable!" Hux snapped, but the exhausted happiness behind the snap refused to be veiled over with irritation. It was hard to be irritated, really, once the tantrum he'd been itching for had run its course and he'd met Kylo at The Literatea Cafe on the south side of the quad. As though he'd known Hux would want something sweet and full of processed ingredients and utterly bad for him, Kylo had apparently taken it upon himself to get him a chai latte and a chocolate muffin, for which Hux was rather thankful. 

"Unbelievable?" Kylo asked, pushing the plate with the muffin over to him. Hux ripped it in half savagely, stuffed his mouth with a bite that left chocolate smearing along the corner of his lip. He licked it away with an irrepressible amount of joy, fully aware that Kylo's eyes were following the tip of his tongue. "What was?" 

"Just the irresponsibility of young people these days," Hux murmured after swallowing. The muffin left a nice sticky feeling in his mouth, and he was already starting to mentally calculate exactly how vigorous of a sexual encounter he might need to have tonight to stay within his daily calorie limit. 

Quite vigorous, he decided with glee. 

"They can't even take care of the experiment they signed on to work for," he continued, taking another bite of the muffin and licking the smudges of melted chocolate off his fingers, batting his eyelashes rather lasciviously at Kylo. "And I mean, it's my thesis and all that, so I expect a certain amount of dedication. Is that too much to ask?"

"No, of course not," Kylo responded automatically; Hux was sure that the other hadn't been paying a whit of attention. He also resolved to hide the fact that he'd set up the bulk of his valuable thesis experiments in a locked closet in the laboratory, having foreseen inevitable problems and staff failures due to a paranoid nature that had served him well over many years. In fact, he'd set up, run, and hidden so many of the vital steps of his thesis work that everything in the outside laboratory was extraneous and would not be missed. 

Not, of course, that he would venture to tell anyone that. It was rather gratifying, being the lord of a little domain. 

"And then there's Millicent," Hux sighed, popping the last bite of muffin into his mouth and chewing it slowly, trying to make it last. "I thought for sure Delta would have let me take her, but no dice. I'm not entrusting her to one of those mongrels I call assistants, and don't even think I'm going to put her in a kennel. She has a very good pedigree, I'll have you know." 

This was far from the truth; cats with good pedigrees didn't usually find themselves stuck up trees, but Hux liked to fluff her resume a bit. "What should we do with her?" 

"I suppose we could, I dunno, put her in a crate in cargo?" Kylo asked. "I know some airlines -" He trailed off at the sight of Hux's steely glare. That didn't bode well. 

"Give Millie to Mistah Poe!" Rey piped up at Kylo's elbow. 

"Mister Poe?" Hux frowned at the thought. The man looked blatantly untrustworthy; Hux's father had always said one should never put faith in a man who put a half-assed attempt into shaving, and Hux had definitely seen Poe in public with stubble, several bloody bits of toilet tissue hanging off his neck, or both. 

"He's a Good Person," Rey argued, seeming to sense Hux's reluctance. "Millie will like him." 

"I suppose I could talk to him about it," Hux sniffed, relenting as he remembered how stingy Rey was with her designation of Good People. As far as he knew, Kylo had not yet earned that particular distinction, and it was something he never failed to lord over the other when given the chance. If Rey had dictated that Poe was a Good Person, well, perhaps that was an avenue worth giving some thought to.

* * *

 

"I'll do it," Poe said, before Hux had even finished proposing the offer. It was a rather generous one, after all, and Poe had never been one to turn away from the prospect of a free dollar. "You can leave Miss Millicent to me." 

Was he allergic to cats? Yes. Would he risk anaphylactic shock for the chance to supplement his meager salary? Also yes. He made a mental note to stock up on Benadryl and make full use of his employee discount. 

"She only eats Fancy Feast," Hux said, then paused, apparently waiting for Poe to make note of this. Poe tapped a few buttons on the cash register halfheartedly, and this was apparently enough to suffice. "She likes her baths on Saturday evenings at seven-thirty, after Jeopardy. You must use Paw Princess Shampoo, and you must comb her fur and blow dry her afterwards. You will set up her litter box by your washing machine; if you do not possess one of those (here, Hux nearly shuddered at the thought), then you may set it next to your fireplace." Poe owned neither of these things in his apartment, but figured they'd be able to work around it. 

Hux finished reeling off the list of things Millicent might want or need, and Poe was loath to admit that he'd zoned out approximately halfway through Hux's explanation of what sweaters she was to wear and in what order. 

He'd truly never met such a pampered pet.

* * *

 

"You're petsitting his cat?" Finn asked, after Hux had departed, sashaying with the predatory look of someone who was about to have quite the night of activity. "I thought you were allergic to cats."

"I am," Poe said, pouting. "But he made me an offer I couldn't refuse." 

Finn rolled his eyes at him, but couldn't keep himself from smiling. He was quite sure that he adored Poe, even though he'd memorized the employee manual and was always raring to awe others with his movie-quote prowess.

* * *

 

"Well, that's taken care of," Hux announced as he sauntered into their bedroom and unceremoniously tossed Millicent out to play with Rey and her plastic cockroach. "Poe has generously offered to take Millicent while we're gone." 

"That's excellent to hear," Kylo replied, smiling fondly up at him and vaguely wondering what sort of plans Hux had in store for the evening. There was a feisty glint in his blue-green eyes that indicated there was something rather saucy to come. He hoped Rey was fast asleep, or absorbed in rifling through Hux's DVD collection. He listened hard. The blaring sounds of Jurassic Park in the next room indicated the latter. "Well, you're..." He faltered, wondering what exactly to say. "You're probably wondering why I've gathered us here today -"

"I'm not," Hux said bluntly, cutting him off with a shirt to the face as he began divesting himself of his clothes at lightning speed. He might normally have taken the time to fold them, but he was in quite the impatient mood after the events that had transpired that very day. "I live here, remember? You're not gathering anybody anywhere." 

Kylo opened his mouth to protest and was promptly met with a mouthful of Hux's slacks. 

When he'd managed to claw them off his face and into a puddle on the floor, he could only gawp at the sight before him. 

"Well, you're...you're really raring to go, aren't you?" he asked, his mouth dry. In place of his usual silk boxers, Hux had opted for a scrap of silk and lace that looked straight from the Victoria's Secret catalogues that the mailman had mistakenly delivered to Kylo's address one day instead of his next-door neighbor's. The swell of Hux's cock was already tenting the lingerie, and Kylo felt himself on the verge of fainting with delight. 

"Is it okay?" Hux asked, looking uncharacteristically self-conscious. His hands were curling into loose fists at his sides, uncurling. "Do you...like it?"

"Like it?" Kylo asked, smiling broadly. "I love it." 

Hux's eyes lit up, and Kylo barely had time to brace himself against the headboard before Hux flung himself at him in a wanton display that probably would have made the Hux from a year ago cringe in mortification. Clearly, Hux had taken the time in the bathroom to prepare himself thoroughly, because Kylo could hardly get a word out before Hux had yanked off his boxers, pushed aside a panel of lace, and sat himself promptly in Kylo's lap. 

Kylo was quite sure he'd died and gone to heaven. If, of course, heaven had dinosaurs roaring and children screaming in the background. 

"Maybe," he huffed, pleasure puddling heavily in the pit of his belly as Hux pushed him back into the pillows and squeezed deliciously around him, "maybe you should shout more often." 

"Shout?" Hux asked, dedicating his full effort to push himself down in such a way that Kylo's cock rubbed against his prostate. "What shouting?" 

"At your students," Kylo groaned, his hands lifting from the messy sheets to clamp themselves around Hux's hips, thumbs stroking across the flimsy lace. "God, Hux. You're unbelievable." 

"What's really unbelievable," Hux huffed back, trying and failing to stifle a sob as one of Kylo's hands meandered over to stroke lovingly at his lace-covered cock, "what's really unbelievable is that Delta won't let me bring Millicent on the plane." 

"What a tragedy," Kylo whispered, transfixed by the way Hux's eyebrows had started to quirk, his bottom lip drawn between his teeth as he rocked his hips into Kylo's again and again. "You should write a strongly worded email." 

Hux laughed breathlessly, a sound that turned into a series of high-pitched desperate moans as Kylo thumbed at the leaking slit of his cock through the lace. 

"C'mon," Kylo implored, smiling through gritted teeth as he tried to stave off his orgasm, trying to wait. "If you come quickly, maybe we can get another round in. Burn off the muffin." 

Hux collapsed into his arms, biting down on his shoulder with a strength that Kylo knew would leave marks, and came in his panties. Kylo groaned at the feeling of Hux squeezing and pulsing around him, and his hips shuddered off the bed. 

"You know me far too well," Hux gasped, once Kylo's cock had stopped twitching and jerking pleasantly inside him. Kylo had sunk back into the sheets, looking pleased as punch, and Hux rolled off him, picking at the thoroughly destroyed lingerie and wondering if he might be able to get a discount online if he bought in bulk. For the next time, of course. 

"I do, I do," Kylo murmured, his eyes closed, a lazy smile on his face as he patted lovingly at Hux's shoulder. Hux curled into Kylo's side, vowing to take a quick power nap before their next frenzy, and, in his drowsy state, found that he couldn't stop the thoughts of whether or not Kylo might sound like that on their wedding day. 


	23. Bubble Gum

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [PUDDLE JUMPING by instantlysupercoffee](https://instantlysupercoffee.tumblr.com/image/158804347197)

Poe glared at the cat. Millicent glared murderously right back at him, though the ferocity of the look was severely diminished by the fact that her blue and pink striped sweater (cashmere, no doubt) was currently tangled in her collar and had the effect of making her look like a young teenager who had no idea how to tie a tie. And with terrible fashion sense. 

"Well," Poe huffed, trying not to sneeze. "Ball's in your court, Miss Millie." He added emphasis to the last two words, even as his eyes watered and itched madly. "In the sweater or out of it, I don't care, but so help me God you'd better make a decision in the next ten seconds or I'm tossing you in an ice cream freezer." 

Poe had gleefully ignored the warning in the employee manual that under no circumstances were animals to be allowed in the store, and had passed her off rather unconvincingly as a service cat. No, he wasn't blind, he assured whoever would ask - not that many people did. He was just working on an animal behavior and intelligence project at the local university. 

Some people cooed over Millicent's fluffiness (thanks to the Paw Princess shampoo Poe had bought at a large discount); others were more amused by her sweater and matching booties. 

Poe was in neither camp, and honked into a tissue, wondering if it was at all possible to build up a tolerance to Benadryl. Maybe he'd have to start going in for allergy shots, but that would mean coming into close contact with needles, and Poe was not exactly one for needles. He grimly recalled fainting at a well-meaning blood donation appointment a few years ago, and the volunteers had carted him off to an emergency room without even so much as a chance to receive his free cookie. 

He was working the express lane today, and he could just see that the person who had just plunked their basket down on the conveyor belt clearly had more than fifteen items. Ordinarily, he wouldn't have kicked up a fuss about it, but his eyes were itching something fierce, his nose was running like a dam that had sprung a leak, and he was just in a generally bad and irritable mood. 

"Sorry," he barked, without being sorry in the least bit. "Looks like you've got quite a fair bit over fifteen items there. I'm afraid you'll have to go to a different queue."

The man huffed and puffed, made vague protests about how he was only a little over, but close, as far as Poe was concerned, was only for dartboards and horseshoes, or whatever the saying was. Without taking his eyes off the man's, he deliberately reached up and clicked his call light to CLOSED. The man's face turned a rather surprising shade of red, but, grumbling, he went off to join another queue. 

Poe grinned in savage victory, and Millicent meowed her approval. Maybe they weren't too different, the two of them, after all.

* * *

 

"Not bad," Finn conceded, having noted the man's storming off from Poe's till in a fit of rage, but not before deliberately using his basket to knock off several boxes of candy and exactly three bananas from a wire rack near the magazines. "Not bad at all. I've never seen you enforce the fifteen item rule." 

"Rules are meant to be enforced," Poe proclaimed, haughtily. Millicent blinked twice at Finn, as if to say she agreed wholeheartedly with her temporary master's change of heart. "Where would be as a society without rules? A lawless place, surely, with people crossing streets without a walk signal, and gum wrappers all over the sidewalk." 

"Oh, the horror," Finn agreed, stuffing his very own gum wrapper deep inside his pocket and resolving to toss it in the nearest trash receptacle at hand when he got the chance. 

Then again, there was something to be said for the look Poe had when he was all ruffled about something. Finn resolutely held onto his gum wrapper for future opportunities.

* * *

 

At the very moment Poe was berating a hapless customer trying to be sly, Hux was tossing and turning in the sheets. Kylo was merely disappointed that it wasn't because of anything he was doing, but rather because Hux was attempting to locate something that had fallen under the bed and he didn't want to get any dust bunnies on his sweater. Or something of the sort. Kylo had Rey for missions that involved searching for things in small spaces, but Rey was currently sleeping the sleep of the just and Kylo preferred it that way. 

That, and Hux's butt really did look quite cute. 

"You know, you could be making yourself useful," Hux grunted, his voice muffled. 

"How so?" Kylo wanted to know, glad that Hux couldn't see him smirking. That didn't seem like a good idea, given Hux's apparent stress levels (which were, as some may have come to expect, through the roof). "I'm taller, and a fair bit broader, than you." 

Hux grunted back something Kylo didn't quite catch. He had a feeling it was something to do with his upbringing. Hux was rather fond of grumbled insults like that. 

"Well, then," he addressed Hux's bottom, "I'm going to finish packing up Rey's things. Do feel free to call if you need help getting something off the top shelf of the closet." 

He all but skipped out of the room gleefully, reveling in Hux's muted shout of ill-concealed rage, and resolved to squash all of Rey's belongings into a small duffel he'd unearthed a few days ago from the depths of one of the cupboards. When he'd asked Hux what the point was, exactly, of such a small duffel, Hux had replied with a straight face that he'd purchased it for Millicent's odds and ends, but had stopped using it after it became apparent that the inside lining was made with a brand of cheap polyester that he absolutely would not tolerate. Kylo and Rey, he'd sneered, being of lower sensibilities and taste, would undoubtedly find it to their liking. 

Kylo found it quite adequate for his purposes, though he was more than surprised to find that the bulk of her clothing and earthly possessions seemed rather more than had been apparent when she'd first moved in with him. This was mainly due to the fact that his aunt was rather good at folding children's clothing into tiny squares no bigger than a paper napkin, and Kylo's parents had not seen fit to pass him that particular gene. Instead, he'd gotten an awkwardly large frame, slightly myopic eyes, and a penchant for cheap cherry flavored vodkas. 

Hux would have shuddered at the thought of any cherry flavored alcohol, but so far Kylo had managed to keep his stash well squirreled away in a duffel bag in a closet of his own, and was strongly considering having a shot on the sly after he'd finished. 

He whistled cheerfully to himself - but not too loud, Rey was still fast asleep - as he continued to pack away her things.

* * *

 

Hux, in fact, knew all about Kylo's taste in alcohol. He'd come upon the innocent looking duffel stashed away so secretively underneath his kitchen sink, behind the extra sponges he kept in case of emergency, and had heard the rolling clink of glass within. Curious as to what it could possibly be, he'd lugged it out, unzipped it, and discovered bottle upon bottle of FROST branded cherry vodka. 

He had eyed them suspiciously, wondering what Kylo could possibly see in them, and had opted to take a sip from the one that was open. After, of course, scrupulously cleaning the mouth and neck of the bottle, because one could never be too careful. 

The first swallow had tasted exactly like cough medicine. He'd ended up spluttering and nearly heaving his lunch into the nearby sink, but once it had sufficiently burnt away a good three quarters of his esophagus, he began to think that certainly it couldn't be as bad as he'd thought. 

So he'd taken another swallow, and then another. And another. 

By the fourth or fifth swallow, he'd determined that it actually tasted more like an upscale version of cherry Kool-Aid, and had put it away promptly afterward, because the kitchen was starting to spin and something that delicious was surely dangerous for his waistline.

* * *

 

The errant sock he'd been fishing for was finally within his clutches, and he was quite sure he only had a minor crick in his back that Kylo could surely remedy with his coitus-based chiropractics. 

Hux hadn't shown it, but he was actually quite nervous. If what Kylo had been saying about his aunt and uncle were true, and if the research grant and biographical blog posts were true, he was, very shortly, going to be in the presence of scientific royalty. He wondered, greedily, if he could somehow get one or both of them to sign his laboratory notebook. Press hard enough to imprint their signatures on the carbon copy. That way he'd have a spare one to sell on CraigsList if things got rough. Not, of course, that they would. He had his life planned out to a meticulous detail, right down to the meals he was planning to serve at his wedding to Kylo. 

An option of a nice cedar plank salmon and whipped garlic potatoes, or a filet mignon with more of the same. For the vegetarians, well, he supposed he'd have to include a salad option. Perhaps a Portobello steak? He made a mental note to jot that down later, in his Word file titled "TAX DEDUCTION PLANS." That way he could be sure that no snooping colleagues/undergraduates/boyfriends would have any idea what his true plans were. 

Of course, not that Kylo had proposed, but the way Hux was looking at it, it was surely only a matter of time. 

"Don't get overexcited," he hissed to himself, pairing the missing sock with its mate and tossing it into a duffel. Perhaps he'd come to discover something incriminating about Kylo during the coming months, or perhaps even on the rapidly approaching trip, that would make him grateful that he hadn't jumped the gun on anything. 

But even he had to admit that so far, everything seemed rather in order. Other than, of course, Kylo's general lack of care for basic hygiene. The cockroaches in the man's old apartment could attest to that, though Kylo had done his best to protest that that was entirely the fault of building management. 

He was missing Millicent sorely, but he had comforted himself with preparing a fully detailed itinerary of what he would see and do in Australia. He had also comforted himself with ripping Simmons's formal lab to shreds. Unbeknownst to him, Kylo, a generous soul, had gone into his grading book and graciously changed Simmons's resounding F to a more resolute C.

Hux reviewed the contents of his duffel once more. Everything seemed to be in order, from the sunscreen to the light but protective clothing to the thick worn romance paperback he'd stashed somewhere between his toiletries bag and his extra pairs of socks. He had already double and triple checked their passports and tickets, and made sure everything was shipshape. 

And yet there was this sort of prevailing sadness underlying the whole affair that he was loathe to admit. Rey had grown on him, much like a fungus on an unsuspecting log, and he had no doubt that her eventual detachment would be painful. 

However, because he was inherently a man of planning, he had taken it upon himself to look at available lab postings they might have at the university branch down there. He hadn't yet gotten around to telling Kylo, but figured it might be a nice surprise for a rainy day. 

All that remained, really, was the flight itself. Hux could almost taste the airline food already, and mentally added another note to pack some snacks. 


	24. Pretzels

Timmons gaped down at his examination paper. He rubbed his eyes, thinking that perhaps the 32-point Bold Arial on the cover page of the test had to be some sort of typo. He glanced around the auditorium, noting that several of the jaded stares did, indeed, belong to several people that he knew, or was vaguely familiar with.   
  
BIOLOGY 300 LEVEL, read the cover page in question. Or, in other words, Microbiology for the Uninitiated. As Hux might have fondly put it, Microbiology for the Average Cretin.   
  
Yet it seemed impossible that this auditorium he was sitting in was BIO300. He had a strong temptation to stand up and walk out of the room, just to see if the plaque outside the doors was indeed the same as the hall this final had been assigned to.   
  
Timmons flipped through the questions again, then once more just for good measure.   
  
"What is the powerhouse of the cell?" droned one, on the back of page 3. "List one feature that distinguishes plant cells from animal cells." The exam was frighteningly easy, and had it not been that BIOLOGY 100 LEVEL was a prerequisite for this class, Timmons would have been nothing short of convinced that he was in an introductory science final.   
  
The TA standing at the front of the room looked rather fetching - and rather bored, like she'd rather have been anywhere else than here. Timmons could appreciate that. He'd much rather have been sleeping, or eating breakfast, or finishing up a paper for his Anthropology elective. In short, there were a million other things Timmons would rather have been doing, but unfortunately Microbiology was one of those classes that was, somehow, crucial to his major, even though he, all the people on Internet forums, and his career advisor all gleefully informed him nonchalantly that he would not find the course applicable to any of his work after he graduated.   
  
The TA's name was Phasma. Timmons was smitten down with love - and a hint of lust - at first sight.  
  
While examining her cuticles, she had nonchalantly informed the class that she had been largely responsible for the layout and questions of the final exam, and they could all thank her after the testing period was over. She was well aware that some of her fellow PhD candidates could be rather - ah - fond of screwing everyone over, pardon her language, but she was strongly of the opinion that finals occurring in the wee hours of the morning (see: 8 AM) deserved quite a bit of leeway.  
  
Timmons had heartily concurred with her opinion, and had taken a rather large swig of his Baileys-dosed coffee.   
  
Furthermore, Phasma had drawled in a bored voice, the students were all more than welcome to argue points back during her office hours the following Thursday, and, she made it very clear, she was more likely to agree with their opinion if they brought some sort of pastry. She was partial to baklava.  
  
Timmons vowed to start going to church more often, because her very presence clearly proved the existence of God.   
  
He handed in his exam in record time, and he swore their hands brushed as he relinquished the exam packet.   
  
It felt like the start to a giddy rom-com, and Timmons was only too happy to oblige.

* * *

 

At the very same time the hapless Timmons was sailing through his microbiology final, Hux was negotiating the security queues at the airport.   
  
"Relax, babe," Kylo advised, kneading rather comfortingly at the small of Hux's back. "I'm almost positive you won't be asked to step aside for a strip search."  
"You'd better hope not," Hux snarked back, though Kylo had hit the nail on the head. That was one of his worst fears, along with dust bunnies and the very thought of a rising income tax. "I'll claim you've got firearms in your baggage, liquids and gels exceeding three ounces..."  
  
"Right, right," Kylo soothed, pecking Hux's cheek even as he stuffed the boarding pass into Hux's hand. "Well," he continued breezily, "I'll be over here in Pre-Check with my ward if you need anything." Hux, unfortunately, had not been granted Pre-Check status as he was of no real relation to Rey, and so he merely simmered and glowered in the queue reserved for those unfortunate souls who had neither handicap nor accommodating relative to see them into the other line. Despite arguing with Kylo that he, clearly, was best suited to help Rey through the metal detectors, Kylo had been having none of it: he'd been doing his research online about the benefits and disadvantages associated with the different types of airport security lines, and Hux grudgingly allowed that Kylo had become a more informed citizen as of late.   
  
Currently, the person in front of him was still struggling to remove their belt from their jeans. Hux was stricken with the abject desire to screech that they were wearing the belt about three notches too tight around their corpulent waist, but he had the feeling that that would make him no friends among the other travelers, and so he kept to himself. He could see Kylo all but snickering in the other queue, Rey flung over his shoulder like a particularly benign sack of potatoes, and he envied them dearly.   
  
"Alright, sir, step on through," the agent ordered, beckoning him with a neoprene-gloved finger as Hux reluctantly relinquished his baggage to the conveyor belt. He did as instructed, placing the tips of his toes on the yellow footprints inside the machine, and was understandably irritated when the TSA agent informed him he would have to step aside and allow for a minor pat down on his shoulder and back area.   
  
He could hear Kylo and Rey snickering as the pair of them waited by the stacks of plastic bins, and was all too aware that his face was flushed crimson as the agent clinically examined his spine and shoulders before announcing he was clear to go.   
  
"Don't you dare say a word," Hux hissed as he snatched his pinstriped duffel from the conveyor belt. The man in front of him was now struggling to squeeze into his belt; Hux sympathized with the clearly over-stretched leather.   
  
"Wasn't going to," Kylo replied smartly, though Hux could see some sort of leery comment rattling around the vast abyss of Kylo's skull. Rattling quite loudly, too, he amended. Some days he doubted that Kylo had more than a couple of thoughts and a few choice explicit phrases at his mental disposal.   
  
"I'm hungry," Rey announced grandly as Hux slotted his passport back into its special zippered pouch on the inside of his duffel.   
  
"Of course you are," Hux replied, strapping on his watch. It was half past nine, and the flight wasn't set to leave until noon. He had insisted on leaving their apartment - after double and triple checking the locks and stove - at no later than seven, a time at which Kylo was much too pliant with sleep to even think about arguing about the excessive earliness of the hour. Now that he had ample time to think about it, Hux thought that probably Kylo would have been right, they wouldn't have needed to leave that early, but one could never tell with airports.   
  
Lawless places, those, with their germs and the prodding agents and the frightfully bushy-looking German shepherds who prowled among paying customers, suspecting bushels of cocaine in every knapsack.   
  
"Not like we don't have hours to kill," Kylo muttered, clearly within earshot. Hux fixed him with a firm glare that, he was irritated to find, slid off him with a practiced ease.   
  
"Quite," Hux settled for, acidly. "But now that we do have these hours available to us, I'm sure we'll be able to find endless sources of food at the concourse and won't have to stoop to a plastic-wrapped sandwich that's been sitting on the shelf God knows how many days." Hux was leery of plastic-wrapped sandwiches in general.  
  
Kylo waved aside his concerns, already towing Rey over to the terminal directory, where she promptly began to smear the illuminated glass with grubby fingerprints. Hux shuddered in distaste, and was thankful he had remembered to pack a jumbo supply of baby wipes.   
  
“Pretzels,” Rey declared, and Hux was powerless to stop her. He allowed himself to be alternately dragged and carted along to the end of the concourse, and was mildly grateful to find that the pretzel vendor was located next to a small wine shop that specialized in anesthetizing soon-to-be passengers with complementary draughts of local vintage. He checked his watch again; it was only nine forty-five.  
  
There was plenty of time to get well and properly buzzed.

* * *

 

Kylo could only thank the gods for the small wine boutique in the concourse. Hux was relaxing already, his spine slouching just the slightest as he sank into the iron wrought chair, and he even smiled benignly as Rey scattered salt crystals and smeared mustard all over the glass table.   
  
The hours passed more quickly than he’d expected, and all too soon it was time to line up for boarding. Hux was pliant with the wine, and allowed Kylo to herd him past the none-too-hygienic crowds and onto the plane, where he also allowed him to press him into the middle seat on one aisle. Rey had, of course, demanded the window, and Kylo was already jaded with cloudscapes and the lurking black blue of open water beneath him.   
  
Much to his surprise, Hux also allowed Kylo to push up the armrest between them. He could only chalk it up to an alcohol-induced mood alteration, because Hux was normally a stickler for personal space and made a point of pushing a cushion between the two of them whenever they might sit on the sofa and watch a movie. He overheated easily, he claimed, but Kylo still secretly believed that it was due to the fact that Hux had a terminal distaste of prolonged contact with other people unless it was for, ah, amorous reasons.   
  
He wondered vaguely if this was one of those planes that served little bottles of rum and tequila for a few dollars, and vowed to find out.

* * *

 

As it happened, Hux drifted off almost instantly the plane started taxiing down the runway. Rey accepted his allotted serving of peanuts and mini chocolate chip cookies greedily.   
  
Kylo alternated between tapping out sentences of his novel to be on his laptop, reading a PDF of a popular murder mystery he’d found online, and concentrating on the comforting weight of Hux’s head against his shoulder.   
  
He woke him up for the dinner tray, eventually, and was pleased to see that Hux only complained twice about the questionable standards of airline fare before shoveling it down anyway. It was some sort of rice and chicken dish that came out tasting sort of too peppery and definitely too rubbery, but Hux either appeared not to notice or was too tired to go rummage through the overhead bins for the cheese and tomato sandwiches he’d packed earlier for the trip.   
  
Kylo would have bet dear money on it being the latter.   
  
Rey had passed out sometime after dinner and before the third repetition of some in-flight movie that Kylo was not entirely certain was altogether age-appropriate. His eyelids were starting to grow sore and heavy, too, so he tucked away his laptop into the net in the seat in front of him and went to sleep. Hux’s body was warm and solid against his own, and Kylo had a refreshing five hours of contented dreams before Hux rudely jabbed an elbow into his kidneys and ordered him to get up, he had to use the bathroom.

* * *

 

At the moment Hux was stumbling blindly along the dim aisle towards the lavatory, Finn was, hundreds of miles away, handing Poe another tissue from the miniature pack he kept handy. His young cousin, Gabriella (Gabby for short) sat on the laminate countertop in front of Poe’s till, swinging her legs back and forth and petting Millicent with a devotion that rivaled that of ardent cat-lovers. She was sucking on an orange lollipop Poe had handed her earlier, and looked as pleased as punch to be there.   
  
Fortunately for Finn, it was a slow day at the supermarket, and the only customer they’d had that day was still in the back poring over the celery stalks, as she had been for the past hour and a half.   
  
He could tell that Poe was trying to be upbeat and jovial for Gabby’s sake, but could also tell that he was miserable. His eyes were red and itchy behind his sunglasses, Finn knew, and he’d already gone through several tissues. Millicent meowed and cooed happily under the attention she was receiving, and Finn was counting the minutes down until their lunch break, where he’d invited Poe on a picnic with him and Gabby. Millicent, it went unspoken, would have free and discerning reign of the cafe during, under the discretion of BB8 and Miss Vesuvius.  
  
Gabby was telling Poe all about what she was learning in school, and Poe was sniffling back stuffy inquiries about her art appreciation class.   
  
While Gabby was occupied with rearranging the bows on Millicent’s head, Finn dared to reach out and squeeze Poe’s hand surreptitiously in a show of sympathy and solidarity for his plight. Finn thought that Poe looked mildly pleased by this, but it was rather hard to tell; he’d just erupted in hives.

* * *

 

All things considered, Hux thought with no small amount of self-satisfaction, it had been a peaceful and relatively uneventful flight. Rey had been absorbed by the vast arrangement of in-flight movies, Kylo hadn't impinged too much on his personal space, and the airplane food was somewhat tolerable. Nobody had tampered with the smoke detectors in the lavatories, and he’d finished nursing a pleasantly cold and crisp ginger ale just as the pilot announced their descent into Sydney.   
  
He was also pleased to find that his bags hadn’t jounced around too much in the overhead bin, and positively elated to find that the weather, upon stepping out, was pleasantly warm instead of the scorching heat he’d always expected Australia to be like.   
  
“Benjamin!” a woman yodeled just past the baggage carousel, and Hux squinted in that general direction. Kylo tensed slightly beside him. “Benjamin, there you are!”   
  
Rey gave an audible gasp, and before Hux could do more than clutch at the place where her sleeve had been, she was sprinting towards the woman. There was something almost sad and poignant about it, Hux thought to himself, and he sternly tried to remind himself that he’d always known Rey would have to return to her parents someday.   
  
That, and he wasn't too cut out for parenthood yet.   
  
It was poor consolation, but Kylo’s steady hand on his arm was comfort enough as he steered the pair of them towards Rey’s parents.

* * *

 

“You must be Brendon,” a man in shockingly tweed pants said with a warm smile as he held out his hand. Hux took it. It was dry and slightly calloused, and he had only just started to comprehend that he was in the presence of one of the Great Scientists of this time. He was suitably impressed, so much so that he wouldn't even have noticed the misnomer had Kylo not pointed it out.   
  
“This is Brendol, Uncle Luke, Aunt Ann,” Kylo said, smiling and allowing his uncle and aunt to fuss over him and fuss over Rey. “My partner.” Hux’s heart skipped a beat at that, butterflies or the airplane chicken fluttering madly in his stomach. Kylo seemed completely at ease with the declaration, and Hux was grateful he’d made it sound like a relationship of equals (though, if he was being honest, he himself was clearly superior in almost all departments). The term ‘boyfriend’ seemed a bit juvenile, and such esteemed researchers as Kylo’s aunt and uncle might have been wont to note the semantics.   
  
“Thank you for your hospitality,” Hux began, but they waved his whole prepared speech off nonchalantly.   
  
“Nonsense, dear boy. We’re fully intending to list it as an expense for reimbursement,” Ann replied, insisting on lugging Hux’s duffel over her shoulder as though it weighed nothing more than a pea plant.   
  
Kylo and Luke were chatting about something related to some sort of order. It sounded vaguely religious, and Hux wanted no part of that.   
  
“Rey seems to be rather fond of you,” Ann observed with a wide smile as Rey slotted one of her hands into Hux’s. “She tells me you have a cat she loves to play with. Hopefully she’s being kind and gentle to it, she can be rather…spirited.”  
  
Hux vaguely wondered how much information Rey had managed to spit out in the few moments she had been away from his side.   
  
“Millicent loves her the best in our household,” Hux agreed, though not without a small tinge of jealousy. The presence of the Model Citizen award languishing away in a nightstand drawer weighed heavily on his mind.   
  
“Good. At least the feeling is mutual.” He could feel Ann’s keen scrutiny on him, and hoped that she would deem him a fitting step-in babysitter slash benevolent older cousin.   
  
And for what? a little voice in the back of his mind wondered. Because you’d like to impress her into thinking you could spend more time with her daughter?   
He didn’t particularly want to think about that, and turned his mind to other matters. Boring things, like Roseobacter and bioluminescence and the way Kylo’s hand had reached back automatically for him to hold.   
  
The sunlight outside was bright and blinding, and Hux was glad he’d packed a good quantity of sunscreen. He could already feel himself roasting, and prayed that he wouldn't be sunburned too badly during the trip.

**Author's Note:**

> come talk to me on [TUMBLR](http://www.misayawriting.tumblr.com)
> 
> (also a gentle reminder that i adore comments)
> 
> I'm starting to do moodboards, too!  
> [[Hux]](http://misayawriting.tumblr.com/post/155097989239/ahem-as-i-was-saying-kylo-continued-frowning)  
> [[Kylo]](http://misayawriting.tumblr.com/post/155170837539/not-for-the-first-time-kylo-wondered-if-perhaps)


End file.
